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15 

IN MEMORIAM 



ANNOTATED BY 

THE AUTHOR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1906 

u4ll rights reserved 



)^6 ^ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copias Received 

■JAN 11 '906 

Copyright Entry 
^L^ a. J^Xc. No. 
' ^OPY B. 



Copyright, 1905, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906. 



NortoDoti }3rfSB 

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Herwiok & Sinitn Co 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 






IN MEMORIAM 



IN MEMORIAM A, H. H. 

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII 

i 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove ; 

ii 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 

Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 

iii 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 

He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 
IE B 



IN MEMORIAM 

iv 
Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood, thou : 
Our wills are ours, we know not how 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

V 

Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be ; 

They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

vi 
We have but faith : we cannot know ; 

For knowledge is of things we see ; 

And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow. 

vii 
Let knowledge grow from more to more, 

But more of reverence in us dwell ; 

That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 

viii 

But vaster. We are fools and slight ; 

We mock thee when we do not fear : 
But help thy foolish ones to bear ; 

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. 



IN MEMORIAM 

ix 

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me ; 

What seem'd my worth since I began ; 

For merit lives from man to man, 
And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 

X 

Forgive my grief for one removed, 

Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
I trust he lives in thee, and there 

I find him worthier to be loved. 



Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
Confusions of a wasted youth ; 
Forgive them where they fail in truth. 

And in thy wisdom make me wise. 

1849. 



IN MEMORIAM 



I 



1 

I HELD it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

ii 
But who shall so forecast the years 

And find in loss a gain to match ? 

Or reach a hand thro' time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears ? 

iii 

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, 
Let darkness keep her raven gloss : 
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss. 

To dance with death, to beat the ground, 

iv 

Than that the victor Hours should scorn 
The long result of love, and boast, 
' Behold the man that loved and lost, 

But all he was is overworn.' 



JN MEMORIAM 



II 



1 

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 
That name the under-lying dead, 
Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 

Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 

ii 

The seasons bring the flower again, 

And bring the firstling to the flock 
And in the dusk of thee, the clock 

Beats out the little lives of men. 

iii 

O not for thee the glow, the bloom, 
Who changest not in any gale. 
Nor branding summer suns avail 

To touch thy thousand years of gloom : 

iv 
And gazing on thee, sullen tree. 

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
I seem to fail from out my blood 
And grow incorporate into thee. 



IN ME MORI AM 



III 



1 

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, 

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 
O sweet and bitter in a breath. 

What whispers from thy lying lip ? 



' The stars,' she whispers, ' blindly run ; 

A web is wov'n across the sky ; 

From out waste places comes a cry, 
And murmurs from the dying sun : 

iii 

'And all the phantom. Nature, stands — 
With all the music in her tone, 
A hollow echo of my own, — 

A hollow form with empty hands.' 

iv 
And shall I take a thing so blind. 

Embrace her as my natural good ; 

Or crush her, like a vice of blood, 
Upon the threshold of the mind ? 



IN MEMO RI AM 



IV 



To Sleep I give my powers away ; 

My will is bondsman to the dark ; 

I sit within a helmless bark, 
And with my heart I muse and say : 

ii 

O heart, how fares it with thee now, 

That thou should'st fail from thy desire, 
Who scarcely darest to inquire, 

* What is it makes me beat so low ? ' 



Something it is which thou hast lost. 

Some pleasure from thine early years. 
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears. 

That grief hath shaken into frost ! 

iv 
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross 

All night below the darken'd eyes ; 

With morning wakes the will, and cries, 
*Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.' 



IN MEM0RIAA4 



1 
I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin 

To put in words the grief I feel ; 

For words, like Nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the Soul within. 

ii 
But, for the unquiet heart and brain, 

A use in measured language lies ; 

The sad mechanic exercise, 
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. 



In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er. 

Like coarsest clothes against the cold : 
But that large grief which these enfold 

Is given in outline and no more. 



IN MEMORIAM 



VI 



1 

One writes, that ' Other friends remain,' 

That ' Loss is common to the race ' — 
And common is the commonplace. 

And vacant chaff well meant for grain. 

ii 

That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter, rather more : 
Too common ! Never morning wore 

To evening, but some heart did break. 

iii 
O father, wheresoe'er thou be. 

Who pledgest now thy gallant son ; 

A shot, ere half thy draught be done. 
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. 



O mother, praying God will save 

Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd. 
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 

Drops in his vast and wandaring grave. 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Ye know no more than I who wrought 

At that last hour to please him well ; 
Who mused on all I had to tell, 

And something written, something thought ; 

vi 

Expecting still his advent home ; 
And ever met him on his way 
With wishes, thinking, ' here to-day,' 

Or ' here to-morrow will he come.' 

vii 
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, 

That sittest ranging golden hair ; 

And glad to find thyself so fair, 
Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! 

viii 
For now her father's chimney glows 

In expectation of a guest ; 

And thinking ' this will please him best,' 
She takes a riband or a rose ; 

ix 
For he will see them on to-night ; 

And with the thought her colour burns ; 

And, having left the glass, she turns 
Once more to set a ringlet right ; 



IN MEMORIAM 

X 

And, even when she turn'd, the curse 
Had fallen, and her future Lord 
Was drovvn'd in passing thro' the ford, 

Or kill'd in falling from his horse. 

xi 
O what to her shall be the end ? 

And what to me remains of good ? 

To her, perpetual maidenhood, 
And unto me no second friend. 



IN MEMORIAM 



VII 



1 

Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street, 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 

So quickly, waiting for a hand, 

ii 

A hand that can be clasp'd no more — 
Behold me, for I cannot sleep. 
And like a guilty thing I creep 

At earliest morning to the door. 

iii 

He is not here ; but far away 

The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 

On the bald street breaks the blank day. 



IN MEMORIAM 13 



VIII 

i 

A HAPPY lover who has come 

To look on her that loves him well, 
Who 'lights and rings the gateway bcl 

And learns her gone and far from home ; 

ii 

He saddens, all the magic light 

Dies off at once from bower and hall, 
And all the place is dark, and all 

The chambers emptied of delight : 

iii 

So find I every pleasant spot 

In which we two were wont to meet, 
The field, the chamber and the street. 

For all is dark where thou art not. 



Yet as that other, wandering there 

In those deserted walks, may find 
A flower beat with rain and wind. 

Which once she foster'd up with care ; 



14 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

So seems it in my deep regret, 

my forsaken heart, with thee 
And this poor flower of poesy 

Which little cared for fades not yet. 

vi 
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye, 

1 go to plant it on his tomb. 
That if it can it there may bloom, 

Or dying, there at least may die. 



IN MEMORIAM 15 



IX 



1 

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore 
Sailest the placid ocean-plains 
With my lost Arthur's loved remains, 

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. 

ii 

So draw him home to those that mourn 
In vain ; a favourable speed 
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead 

Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. 



All night no ruder air perplex 

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 
As our pure love, thro' early light 

S' all glimmer on the dewy decks. 

iv 
Sphere all your lights around, above ; 

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; 

Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 
My friend, the brother of my love ; 



i6 IN MEMORIAM 

V 
My Arthur, whom I shall not see 

Till all my widow'd race be run ; 

Dear as the mother to the son, 
More than my brothers are to me. 



IN MEMORIAM 17 



X 



1 

I HEAR the noise about thy keel ; 

I hear the bell struck in the night : 
I see the cabin-window bright ; 

I see the sailor at the wheel. 

ii 
Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, 

And travell'd men from foreign lands ; 

And letters unto trembhng hands ; 
And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. 

iii 

So bring him : we have idle dreams : 
This look of quiet flatters thus 
Our home-bred fancies : O to us. 

The fools of habit, sweeter seems 

iv 

To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 

The chalice of the grapes of God ; 



i8 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Than if with thee the roaring wells 

Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine ; 
And hands so often clasp'd in mine, 

Should toss with tangle and with shells. 



IN MEMORIAM 19 



XI 



Calm is the morn without a sound, 
Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 
And only thro' the faded leaf 

The chestnut pattering to the ground : 

ii 
Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 

And on these dews that drench the furze, 

And all the silvery gossamers 
That twinkle into green and gold : 

iii 

Calm and still light on yon great plain 

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
And crowded farms and lessening towers, 

To mingle with the bounding main : 

iv 

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 

These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
And in my heart, if calm at all, 

If any calm, a calm despair : 



IN ME MORI AM 

V 

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, 

And waves that sway themselves in rest, 
And dead calm in that noble breast 

Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 



IN MEMORIAM 



XII 



1 

Lo, as a dove when up she springs 

To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, 
Some dolorous message knit below 

The wild pulsation of her wings ; 



n 

Like her I go ; I cannot stay ; 

I leave this mortal ark behind, 

A weight of nerves without a mind, 

And leave the cliffs, and haste away 

iii 

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, 

And reach the glow of southern skies, 
And see the sails at distance rise. 

And linger weeping on the marge. 



And saying ; ' Comes he thus, my friend ? 
Is this the end of all my care ? ' 
And circle moaning in the air : 

* Is this the end ? Is this the end ? ' 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

And forward dart again, and play 

About the prow, and back return 
To where the body sits, and learn 

That I have been an hour away. 



IN ME MORI AM 23 



XIII 

i 

Tears of the widower, when he sees 
A late-lost form that sleep reveals, 
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels 

Her place is empty, fall like these ; 

ii 
Which weep a loss for ever new, 

A void where heart on heart reposed ; 
And, where warm hands have prest and 
closed, 
Silence, till I be silent too. 

iii 

Which weep the comrade of my choice, 
An awful thought, a life removed, 
The human-hearted man I loved, 

A Spirit, not a breathing voice. 

iv 
Come Time, and teach me, many years, 

I do not suffer in a dream ; 

For now so strange do these things seem, 
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears ; 



24 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

My fancies time to rise on wing, 

And glance about the approaching sails, 
As tho' they brought but merchants' bales. 

And not the burthen that they bring. 



IN MEMORIAM 25 



XIV 



1 

If one should bring me this report, 

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day, 
And I went down unto the quay, 

And found thee lying in the port ; 

ii 

And standing, muffled round with woe, 
Should see thy passengers in rank 
Come stepping lightly down the plank. 

And beckoning unto those they know ; 

iii 
And if along with these should come 

The man I held as half-divine ; 

Should strike a sudden hand in mine, 
And ask a thousand things of home ; 

iv 

And I should tell him all my pain, 

And how my life had droop' d of late. 
And he should sorrow o'er my state 

And marvel what possess'd my brain ; 



26' IN MEMORIAM 

V 

And r perceived no touch of change, 
No hint of death in all his frame, 
But found him all in all the same, 

I should not feel it to be strange. 



IN MEMORIAM 27 



XV 



To-night the winds begin to rise 

And roar from yonder dropping day : 
The last red leaf is whiri'd away, 

The rooks are blown about the skies ; 

ii 
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, 

The cattle huddled on the lea ; 

And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 
The sunbeam strikes along the world : 

iii 

And but for fancies, which aver 

That all thy motions gently pass 
Athwart a plane of molten glass, 

I scarce could brook the strain and stir 

iv 

That makes the barren branches loud ; 
And but for fear it is not so, 
The wild unrest that lives in woe 

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud 



28 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

That rises upward always higher, 

And onward drags a labouring breast, 
And topples round the dreary west, 

A looming bastion fringed with fire. 



IN MEMORIAM 29 



XVI 

i 

What words are these have fall'n from me ? 
Can calm despair and wild unrest 
Be tenants of a single breast, 

Or sorrow such a changeling be ? 

ii 
Or doth she only seem to take 

The touch of change in calm or storm ; 

But knows no more of transient form 
In her deep self, than some dead lake 

iii 
That holds the shadow of a lark 

Hung in the shadow of a heaven ? 

Or has the shock, so harshly given 
Confused me like the unhappy bark 

iv 
That strikes by night a craggy shelf. 

And staggers blindly ere she sink ? 

And stunn'd me from my power to think 
And all my knowledge of myself; 



30 JN ME MORI AM 

V 

And made me that delirious man 

Whose fancy fuses old and new, 
And flashes into false and true, 

And mingles all without a plan ? 



IN MEMORIAM 



XVII 



31 



1 

Thou comest, much wept for : such a breeze 
Compell'd thy canvas, aiid my prayer 
Was as the whisper of an air 

To breathe thee over lonely seas. 

ii 

For I in spirit saw thee move 

Thro' circles of the bounding sky, 
Week after week : the days go by : 

Come quick, thou bringest all I love. 



Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, 
My blessing, like a line of light, 
Is on the waters day and night, 

And like a beacon guards thee home. 

iv 
So may whatever tempest mars 

Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark 
And balmy drops in summer dark 
Slide frf m the bosom of the stars. 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

So kind an oflfice hath been done, 

Such precious relics brought by thee 
The dust of him I shall not see 

Till all my widow'd race be run 



IN MEMORIAM 



XVIII 



33 



'Tis well ; 'tis something ; we may stand 
Where he in English earth is laid, 
And from his ashes may be made 

The violet of his native land. 



'Tis little ; but it looks in truth 

As if the quiet bones were blest 
Among familiar names to rest 

And in the places of his youth. 

iii 

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep. 
And come, whatever loves to weep, 

And hear the ritual of the dead. 

iv 

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be, 

I, falling on his faithful heart. 

Would breathing thro' his lips impart 

The life that almost dies in me ; 

D 



34 /A^ ME MORI AM 

V 

That dies not, but endures with pain, 
And slowly forms the firmer mind, 
Treasuring the look it cannot find, 

The words that are not heard again. 



IN MEMORIAM 35 



XIX 

i 

The Danube to the Severn gave 

The darken'd heart that beat no more ; 

They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
And in the hearing of the w^ave. 

ii 

There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea-water passes by, 
And hushes half the babbling Wye^ 

And makes a silence in the hills. 

iii 

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, 

And hush'd my deepest grief of all. 
When fiU'd with tears that cannot fall, 

I brim with sorrow drowning song. 

iv 
The tide flows down, the wave again 

Is vocal in its wooded walls ; 

My deeper anguish also falls, 
And I can speak a little then. 



36 IN MEMORIAM 



XX 

i 

The lesser griefs that may be said, 

That breathe a thousand tender vows, 
Are but as servants in a house 

Where Hes the master newly dead ; 

ii 

Who speak their feeling as it is. 

And weep the fulness from the mind : 
. *■ It will be hard,' they say, ' to find 

Another service such as this.' 

iii 

My lighter moods are like to these, 

That out of words a comfort win ; 
But there are other griefs within, 

And tears that at their fountain freeze ; 

iv 
For by the hearth the children sit 

Cold in that atmosphere of Death, 
And scarce endure to draw the breath. 
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : 



IN MEMORIAM 37 

V 

But open converse is there none, 
So much the vital spirits sink 
To see the vacant chair, and think, 

'How good ! how kind ! and he is f^one.' 



38 IN MEMORIAM 



XXI 

i 

I SING to him that rests below, 

And, since the grasses round me wave, 
I take the grasses of the grave, 

And make them pipes whereon to blow. 

ii 

The traveller hears me now and then. 

And sometimes harshly will he speak : 
*This fellow would make weakness weak. 

And melt the waxen hearts of men.' 

iii 

Another answers, ' Let him be, 

He loves to make parade of pain 
That with his piping he may gain 

The praise that comes to constancy.' 

iv 

A third is wroth : 'Is this an hour 

For private sorrow's barren song. 
When more and more the people throng 

The chairs and thrones of civil power ? 



IN ME MORI AM 39 

V 

' A time to sicken and to swoon, 

When Science reaches forth her arms 
To feel from world to world, and charms 

Her secret from the latest moon ? ' 

vi 
Behold, ye speak an idle thing : 

Ye never knew the sacred dust : 

I do but sing because I must. 
And pipe but as the linnets sing : 

vii 
And one is glad ; her note is gay. 

For now her little ones have ranged ; 

And one is sad ; her note is. changed, 
Because her brood is stol'n away. 



40 IN MEMORIAM 



XXII 



1 

The path by which we twain did go, 

Which led by tracts that pleased us well, 
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, 

From flower to flower, from snow to snow : 

ii 
And we with singing cheer'd the way, 

And, crown'd with all the season lent 

From April on to April went, 
And glad at heart from May to May : 

iii 

But where the path we walk'd began 
To slant the fifth autumnal slope. 
As we descended following Hope, 

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man ; 



Who broke our fair companionship. 

And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
And wrapt thee formless in the fci"ld. 

And duird the murmur on thy lip, 



IN MEMO RI AM 41 

V 

And bore thee where I could not see 
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste, 
And think, that somewhere in the waste 

The Shadow sits and waits for me. 



42 IN MEMORIAM 



XXIII 

i 

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, 
Or breaking into song by fits, 
Alone, alone, to where he sits, 

The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot, 

ii 

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, 
I wander, often falling lame, 
And looking back to whence I came, 

Or on to where the pathway leads ; 

iii 
And crying. How changed from where it ran 

Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb ; 

But all the lavish hills would hum 
The murmur of a happy Pan : 

iv 
When each by turns was guide to each, 
And Fancy light from Fancy caught. 
And Thought leapt out to wed with 
Thought 
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech ; 



IN MEMORIAM 43 

V 

And all we met was fair and good, 

And all was good that Time could bring, 
And all the secret of the Spring 

Moved in the chambers of the blood ; 



And many an old philosophy 

On Argive heights divinely sang, 
And round us all the thicket rang 

To many a flute of Arcady. 



44 IN MEMORIAM 



XXIV 



And was the day of my delight 

As pure and perfect as I say ? 
The very source and fount of Day 

Is dash'd with wandering isles of night. 

ii 

If all was good and fair we met, 

This earth had been the Paradise 
It never look'd to human eyes 

Since our first Sun arose and set. 

iii 
And is it that the haze of grief 

Makes former gladness loom so great ? 

The lowness of the present state, 
That sets the past in this relief? 

iv 
Or that the past will always win 

A glory from its being far ; 

And orb into the perfect star 
We saw not, when we moved therein ? 



IN MEMORIAM 45 



XXV 

i 
I KNOW that this was Life, — the track 

Whereon with equal feet we fared ; 

And then, as now, the day prepared 
The daily burden for the back. 

ii 
But this it was that made me move 

As hght as carrier-birds in air ; 

I loved the weight I had to bear, 
Because it needed help of Love : 

iii 
Nor could I weary, heart or hmb. 

When mighty Love would cleave in twain 

The lading of a single pain. 
And part it, giving half to him. 



46 IN MEMORIAM 



XXVI 



Still onward winds the dreary way ; 
I with it ; for I long to prove 
No lapse of moons can canker Love 

Whatever fickle tongues may say. 



And if that eye which watches guilt 

And goodness, and hath power to see 
Within the green the moulder'd tree, 

And towers fall'n as soon as built — 

iii 

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee 

Or see (in Him is no before) 
In more of life true life no more 

And Love the indifference to be, 

iv 

Then might I find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas, 
That Shadow waiting with the keys, 

To shroud me from my proper scorn. 



/N MEMORIAM 



XXVII 



47 



1 

I ENVY not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage, 
The linnet born within the cage, 

That never knew the summer woods : 

ii 

I envy not the beast that takes 

His Hcense in the field of time, 
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime. 

To whom a conscience never wakes ; 

iii 

Nor, what may count itself as blest, 

The heart that never plighted troth 
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth ; 

Nor any want-begotten rest. 

iv 
I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 

I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 



48 IN MEMORIAM 



XXVIII 

i 
The time draws near the birth of Christ : 

The moon is hid ; the night is still ; 

The Christmas bells from hill to hill 
Answer each other in the mist. 

ii 

Four voices of four hamlets round, 

From far and near, on mead and moor. 
Swell out and fail, as if a door 

Were shut between me and the sound : 

iii 

Each voice four changes on the wind. 
That now dilate, and now decrease. 
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, 

Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. 

iv 

This year I slept and woke with pain, 
I almost wish'd no more to wake, 
And that my hold on life would break 

Before I heard those bells again : 



IN MEMORIAM 49 

V 

But they my troubled spirit rule, 

For they controll'd me when a boy ; 
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, 

The merry merry bells of Yule. 



so IN MEMORIAM 



XXIX 

i 

With such compelling cause to grieve 
As daily vexes household peace, 
And chains regret to his decease, 

How dare we keep our Christmas-eve ; 

ii 

Which brings no more a welcome guest 
To enrich the threshold of the night 
With shower'd largess of delight 

In dance and song and game and jest ? 

iii 

Yet go, and while the holly boughs 
Entwine the cold baptismal font, 
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, 

That guard the portals of the house ; 

iv 
Old sisters of a day gone by, 

Gray nurses, loving nothing new ; 

Why should they miss their yearly due 
Before their time ? They too will die. 



IN MEMORIAM 



XXX 



51 



1 

With trembling fingers did we weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth ; 
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, 

And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. 

ii 

At our old pastimes in the hall 

We gambol'd, making vain pretence 
Of gladness, with an awful sense 

Of one mute Shadow watching all. 

iii 
We paused : the winds were in the beech : 

We heard them sweep the winter land ; 

And in a circle hand-in-hand 
Sat silent, looking each at each. 



Then echo-like our voices rang ; 

We sung, tho' every eye was dim, 
A merry song we sang with him 

Last year : impetuously we sang : 



52 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

We ceased : a gentler feeling crept 
Upon us : surely rest is meet : 
'They rest,' we said, 'their sleep is sweet,' 

And silence follow'd, and we wept. 



Our voices took a higher range ; 

Once more we sang : ' They do not die 
Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 

Nor change to us, although they change ; 

vii 

' Rapt from the fickle and the frail 

With gather'd power, yet the same, 
Pierces the keen seraphic flame 

From orb to orb, from veil to veil.' 

viii 
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn. 

Draw forth the cheerful day from night : 
O Father, touch the east, and light 
The light that shone when Hope was born. 



IN MEMORIAM 53 



XXXI 

i 

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 

And home to Mary's house return'd, 
Was this demanded — if he yearn'd 

To hear her weeping by his grave ? 

ii 

' Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? ' 
There lives no record of reply, 
Which telling what it is to die 

Had surely added praise to praise. 

iii 

From every house the neighbours met, 

The streets were fiU'd with joyful sound, 
A solemn gladness even crown'd 

The purple brows of Olivet. 

iv 
Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 

The rest remaineth unreveal'd ; 

He told it not ; or something seal'd 
The lips of that Evangelist. 



54 



IN MEMORIAM 



XXXII 



Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, 

Nor other thought her mind admits 
But, he was dead, and there he sits, 

And he that brought him back is there. 

ii 

Then one deep love doth supersede 
All other, when her ardent gaze 
Roves from the living brother's face, 

And rests upon the Life indeed. 

iii 

All subtle thought, all curious fears. 

Borne down by gladness so complete. 
She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 

With costly spikenard and with tears. 

iv 
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 

Whose loves in higher love endure ; 

What souls possess themselves so pure, 
Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 



IN MEMORIAM 55 



XXXIII 



1 

O THOU that after toil and storm 

Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, 
Whose faith has centre everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form. 



Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 

Her early Heaven, her happy views ; 
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse 

A life that leads melodious days. 

iii 

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine. 

Her hands are quicker unto good : 
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 

To which she links a truth divine ! 

iv 

See thou, that countest reason ripe 
In holding by the law within, 
Thou fail not in a world of sin. 

And ev'n for want of such a type. 



56 IN ME MORI AM 



XXXIV 



1 

My own dim life should teach me this, 
That Hfe shall live for evermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core. 

And dust and ashes all that is ; 

ii 

This round of green, this orb of flame. 
Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 
In some wild Poet, when he works 

Without a conscience or an aim. 

iii 

What then were God to such as I ? 

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
Of things all mortal, or to use 

A little patience ere I die ; 

iv 

'Twere best at once to sink to peace. 

Like birds the charming serpent draws. 
To drop head-foremost in the jaws 

Of vacant darkness and to cease. 



IN MEMORIAM 57 



XXXV 

i 

Yet if some voice that man could trust 

Should murmur from the narrow house, 
' The cheeks drop in ; the body bows : 

Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : ' 

ii 
Might I not say ? ' Yet even here, 

But for one hour, O Love, I strive 
To keep so sweet a thing alive :' 
But I should turn mine ears and hear 



The meanings of the homeless sea, 

The sound of streams that swift or slow 
Draw down y4ionian hills, and sow 

The dust of continents to be ; 



And Love would answer with a sigh, 
* The sound of that forgetful shore 
Will change my sweetness more and more, 

Half-dead to know that I shall die.' 



S8 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

O me, what profits it to put 

An idle case ? If Death were seen 
At first as Death, Love had not been, 

Or been in narrowest working shut, 



Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, 
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 



IN MEMORIAM ^0 



XXXVI 



Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin ; 



For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 

Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

iii 
And so the Word had breath, and wrought 

With human hands the creed of creeds 

In loveliness of perfect deeds. 
More strong than all poetic thought ; 

'" . ^' - 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,"~~~~^ 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef 



6o IN MEMORIAM 



XXXVII 



1 

Urania speaks with darken'd brow : 

' Thou pratest here where thou art least 
This faith has many a purer priest, 

And many an abler voice than thou. 



* Go down beside thy native rill, 

On thy Parnassus set thy feet, 
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet 

About the ledges of the hill.' 

iii 

And my Melpomene replies, 

A touch of shame upon her cheek : 
* I am not worthy ev'n to speak 

Of thy prevailing mysteries ; 



' For I am but an earthly Muse, 
And owning but a little art 
To lull with song an aching heart, 

And render human love his dues ; 



m MEMORIAM 6i 

V 

' But brooding on the dear one dead, 
And all he said of things divine, 
(And dear to me as sacred wine 

To dying lips is all he said), 

iv 

* I murmur'd, as I came along, 

Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd ; 
And loiter'd in the master's field. 

And darken'd sanctities with song.' 



6i^ IN MEMORIAM 



XXXVIII 



With weary steps I loiter on, 

Tho' always under alter'd skies 
The purple from the distance dies, 

My prospect and horizon gone. 

ii 

No joy the blowing season gives, 
The herald melodies of spring. 
But in the songs I love to sing 

A doubtful gleam of solace lives. 

iii 

If any care for what is here 

Survive in spirits render'd free. 
Then are these songs I sing of thee 

Not all ungrateful to thine ear. 



IN MEMORIAM .^ 



XXXIX 

i 

Old warder of these buried bones, 

And answering now my random stroke 
With fruitful cloud and living smoke, 

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones 



And dippest toward the dreamless head, 
To thee too comes the golden hour 
When flower is feeling after flower ; 

But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead, 

iii 

And darkening the dark graves of men,— 
What whisper'd from her lying lips 
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 

And passes into gloom again. 



^4 IN MEMORIAM 



XL 



Could we forget the widow'd hour 

And look on Spirits breathed away, 
As on a maiden in the day 

When first she wears her orange-flower ! 

ii 

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise 
To take her latest leave of home, 
And hopes and light regrets that come 

Make April of her tender eyes ; 

iii 

And doubtful joys the father move, 

And tears are on the mother's face, 
As parting with a long embrace 

She enters other realms of love ; 

iv 

Her office there to rear, to teach. 
Becoming as is meet and fit 
A link among the days, to knit 

The generations each with each ; 



IN MEMORIAM 65 

V 

And, doubtless, unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In those great offices that suit 

The full-grown energies of heaven, 

vi 

Ay me, the difference I discern ! 

How often shall her old fireside 

Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, 

How often she herself return, 

vii 

And tell them all they would have told. 

And bring her babe, and make her boast, 
Till even those that miss'd her most 

Shall count new things as dear as old : 



But thou and I have shaken hands, 
Till growing winters lay me low ; 
My paths are in the fields I know, 

And thine in undiscover'd lands. 



•66 IN ME MORI AM 



XLI 



Thy spirit ere our fatal loss 

Did ever rise from high to higher ; 

As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, 
As flies the lighter thro' the gross. 

ii 

But thou art turn'd to something strange, 
And I have lost the links that bound 
Thy changes ; here upon the ground, 

No more partaker of thy change. 



Deep folly ! yet that this could be — 

That I could wing my will with might 
To leap the grades of life and light, 

And flash at once, my friend, to thee. 



For tho' my nature rarely yields 

To that vague fear implied in death 
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath. 

The bowlings from forgotten fields ; 



IN MEM0RI4M ;67 

V 

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor 

An inner trouble I behold, 

A spectral doubt which makes me cold, 
That I shall be thy mate no more, 

vi 
Tho' following with an upward mind 

The wonders that have come to thee, 

Thro' all the secular to-be. 
But evermore a life behind. 



•68 IN MEMORIAM 



XLII 

i 
I VEX my heart with fancies dim : 

He still outstript me in the race ; 

It was but unity of place 
That made me dream I rank'd with him. 

ii 

And so may Place retain us still, 

And he the much-beloved again, 
A lord of large experience, train 

To riper growth the mind and will : 

iii 

And what delights can equal those 

That stir the spirit's inner deeps, 

When one that loves but knows not, reaps 

A truth from one that loves and knows ? 



JN ME MORI AM 69 



XLIII 



If Sleep and Death be truly one, 

And every spirit's folded bloom 
Thro' all its intervital gloom 

In some long trance should slumber on 



Unconscious of the sliding hour, 

Bare of the body, might it last, 
And silent traces of the past 

Be all the colour of the flower : 

ill 

So then were nothing lost to man ; 
So that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 

The total world since life began ; 



And love will last as pure and whole 

As when he loved me here in Time, 
And at the spiritual prime 

Rewaken with the dawning soul. 



7© /N MEMORIAM 



XLIV 



How fares it with the happy dead ? 

For here the man is more and more ; 

But he forgets the days before 
God shut the doorways of his head. 

ii 

The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, 
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense 
Gives out at times (he knows not whence) 

A little flash, a mystic hint ; 

jii 

And in the long harmonious years 

(If Death so taste Lethean springs). 
May some dim touch of earthly things 

Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. 

iv 
If such a dreamy touch should fall, 
. O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ; 
My guardian angel will speak out 
In that high place, and tell thee all. 



iN MEMORIAM fi 



XLV 

i 

The baby new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 

Has never thought that ' this is I : ' 

ii 
But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of ' I,' and 'me,' 
And finds ' I am not what I see. 
And other than the things I touch.' 

iii 

So rounds he to a separate mind 

From whence clear memory may begin. 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 

iv 

This use may lie in blood and breath, 

Which else were fruitless of their due^ 
Had man to learn himself anew 

Beyond the second birth of Death. 



72 IN ME MORI AM 



XLVI 

i 

We ranging down this lower track, 

The path we came by, thorn and flower, 
Is shadow'd by the growing hour, 

Lest Hfe should fail in looking back. 

ii 

So be it : there no shade can last 

In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 

But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 

The eternal landscape of the past ; 

iii 
A lifelong tract of time reveal'd ; 

The fruitful hours of still increase ; 

Days order'd in a wealthy peace, 
And those five years its richest field. 

iv 
O Love, thy province were not large, 

A bounded field, nor stretching far ; 

Look also. Love, a brooding star, 
A rosy warmth from marge to marge. 



■IN MEMOIR I AM 73 



XLVII 



That each, who, seems a separate whole, 

Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 

Remerging in the general Soul, 

ii 

Is faith as vague as all unsweet : 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside ; 

And I shall know him when we meet : 

iii 

And we shall sit at endless feast. 

Enjoying each the other's good : 
What vaster dream can hit the mood 

Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least 

iv 

Upon the last and sharpest height, 
Before the spirits fade away, 
Some landing-place, to clasp and say, 

* Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light.' 



74; IN ME MORI AM 



XLVIII 



1 

If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, 
Were taken to be such as closed 
Grave doubts and answers here proposed. 

Then these were such as men might scorn : 

ii 

Her care is not to part and prove ; "^ 

She takes, when harsher moods remit, 
What slender shade of doubt may flit, 

And makes it vassal unto love : il i:-:A 

iii 

And hence, indeed, she sports with words, -^ 
But better serves a wholesome law. 
And holds it sin and shame to draw 

The deepest measure from the chords : 

iv 

Nor dare she trust a larger lay. 

But rather loosens from the lip 
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 

Their wings in tears, and skim away. - ' 



IN MEMORIAM 75 



XLIX 



From art, from nature, from the schools. 
Let random influences glance, 
Like light in many a shiver'd lance 

That breaks about the dappled pools : 

ii 

The lightest wave of thought shall lisp. 
The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe. 
The slightest air of song shall breathe 

To make the sullen surface crisp. 



And look thy look, and go thy way, 

But blame not thou the winds that make 
The seeming-wanton ripple break, 

The tender-pencil'd shadow play. 

iv 

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears 
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down. 
Whose muffled motions blindly drown 

The bases of my life in tears. 



76 IN MEM OR JAM 



1 
Be near me when my light is low, 

When the blood creeps, and the nerve: 

prick 
And tingle ; and the heart is sick. 
And all the wheels of Being slow. 

ii 
Be near me when the sensuous frame 

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; 

And Time, a maniac scattering dust. 
And Life, a Fury slinging flame. 

iii 

Be near me when my faith is dry, 

And men the flies of latter spring. 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

iv 

Be near me when I fade away. 

To point the term of human strife, 
And on the low dark verge of life 

The twilight of eternal day. 



IN MEMORIAM 77 



LI 



1 
Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side ? 

Is there no baseness we would hide ? 
No inner vileness that we dread ? i 

ii 

Shall he for whose applause I strove, 

I had such reverence for his blame, 
See with clear eye some hidden shame 

And I be lessen'd in his love ? 

iii 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? 
There must be wisdom with great Death 

The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 

iv 

Be near us when we climb or fall : 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours. 

To make allowance for us all. 



78 IN ME MORI AM 



LII 



I CANNOT love thee as I ought, 

For love reflects the thing beloved ; 
My words are only words, and moved 

Upon the topmost froth of thought. 



n 



' Yet blame not thou thy plamtive song,' 
The Spirit of true love replied ; 
* Thou canst not move me from thy side, 

Nor human frailty do me wrong. 



* What keeps a spirit wholly true 
To that ideal which he bears ? 
What record ? not the sinless years 

That breathed beneath the Syrian blue : 

iv 
' So fret not, like an idle girl, 

That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. 

Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in. 
When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl' 



IN MEMORIAM 79 



LIII 



1 

How many a father have I seen, 
A sober man, among his boys, 
Whose youth was full of foolish noise. 

Who wears his manhood hale and green : 

ii 

And dare we to this fancy give. 

That had the wild oat not been sown, 
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown 

The grain by which a man may live ? 

iii 

Or, if we held the doctrine sound 

For life outliving heats of youth. 
Yet who would preach it as a truth 

To those that eddy round and round ? 



Hold thou the good : define it well : 

For fear divine Philosophy 

Should push beyond her mark, and be 
Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 



8o IN MEMORIAM 



LIV 



Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

ii 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd. 
Or cast as rubbish to the void. 

When God hath made the pile complete ; 

iii 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 

iv 

Behold, we know not anything ; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all. 

And every winter change to spring. 



IN ME MORI AM 8i 

V 

So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light : 

And with no language but a cry. 



82 IN MEMORIAM 



LV 



1 

The wish, that of the living whole 

No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soul ? 

ii 

Are God and Nature then at strife, 

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type she seems. 

So careless of the single life ; 

iii 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds. 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

iv 

I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 



IN MEMORIAM 83 

V 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 



IN MEMORIAM 



LVI 



* So careful of the type ? ' but no. 

From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, ' A thousand types are gone 

I care for nothing, all shall go. 

ii 

' Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, I bring to death : 
The spirit does but mean the breath : 

I know no more.' And he, shall he, 

iii 

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 

iv 

Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — 



IN MEMORIAM 85 

V 

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 

vi 

No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tare each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music match'd with him. 

vii 
O life as futile, then, as frail ! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 

What hope of answer, or redress 1 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 



86 IN MEMORIAM 



LVII 



1 

Peace ; come away : the song of woe 
Is after all an earthly song : 
Peace ; come away : we do him wrong 

To sing so wildly : let us go. 



Come ; let us go : your cheeks are pale ; 
But half my life I leave behind : 
Methinks my friend is richly shrined ; 

But I shall pass ; my work will fail. 

iii 

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, 

One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 

That ever look'd with human eyes. 

iv 
I hear it now, and o'er and o'er. 

Eternal greetings to the dead ; 
And ' Ave, Ave, Ave,' said. 
Adieu, adieu ' for evermore. 



IN MEM OR I Am 87 



LVIII 

i 

In those sad words I took farewell : 
Like echoes in sepulchral halls, 
As drop by drop the water falls 

In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; 



And, falling, idly broke the peace 

Of hearts that beat from day to day, 
Half-conscious of their dying clay. 

And those cold crypts where they shall cease. 



The high Muse answer'd : ' Wherefore grieve 
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear ? 
Abide a little longer here, 

And thou shalt take a nobler leave.' 



-S;':i ;i \.':^;i 



IN MEMORIAM 



LIX 



1 

O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me 
No casual mistress, but a wife, 
My bosom-friend and half of life ; 

As I confess it needs must be ; 

ii 

O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, 

Be sometimes lovely like a bride, 
And put thy harsher moods aside, 

If thou wilt have me wise and good. 

iii 
My centred passion cannot move. 

Nor will it lessen from to-day ; 

But I'll have leave at times to play 
As with the creature of my love ; 

iv 

And set thee forth, for thou art mine. 

With so much hope for years to come. 
That, howsoe'er I know thee, some 

Could hardly tell what name were thine. 



JN MEMORIAM 



LX 



He past ; a soul of nobler tone : 

My spirit loved and loves him yet, 
Like some poor girl v^^hose heart is set 

On one whose rank exceeds her own. 

ii 

He mixing with his proper sphere, 

She finds the baseness of her lot, 
Half jealous of she knows not what, 

And envying all that meet him there. 

"i 

The little village looks forlorn ; 

She sighs amid her narrow days. 
Moving about the household ways. 

In that dark house where she was born. 

iv 

The foolish neighbours come and go, 

And tease her till the day draws by : 
At night she weeps, ' How vain am I ! 

How should he love a thing so low ? ' 



go IN MEMORIAM 



LXI 



If, in thy second state sublime, 

Thy ransom'd reason change repHes 
With all the circle of the wise, 

The perfect flower of human time ; 



And if thou cast thine eyes below, 

How dimly character'd and slight, 

How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night. 

How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! 

iii 
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, 

Where thy first form was made a man ; 

I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can 
The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. 



IN MEMORIAM ^^ 



LXII 

i 

Tho' if an eye that's downward cast 

Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, 
Then be my love an idle tale, 

And fading legend of the past ; . 

ii 

And thou, as one that once declined, 
When he was little more than boy, 
On some unworthy heart with joy, 

But lives to wed an equal mind ; 

Hi 
And breathes a novel world, the while 

His other passion wholly dies. 

Or in the light of deeper eyes 
Is matter for a flying smile. 



9^ IM MEMORIAM. 



LXIII 

i 

Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven, 

And love in which my hound has part, 
Can hang no weight upon my heart 

In its assumptions up to heaven ; 

ii 

And I am so much more than these, 

As thou, perchance, art more than I, 
And yet I spare them sympathy. 

And I would set their pains at ease. 



Somayst thou watch me where I weep. 
As, unto vaster motions bound, 
The circuits of thine orbit round 

A higher height, a deeper deep. 



IN MEMORIAM 93 



LXIV 

i 

Dost thou look back on what hath been, 
As some divinely gifted man, 
Whose life in low estate began 

And on a simple village green ; 

ii 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 

And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance. 

And grapples with his evil star ; 

iii 

Who makes by force his merit known 

And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty state's decrees, 

And shape the whisper of the throne ; 



And moving up from high to higher, 

Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 

The centre of a world's desire ; 



94 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, 

When all his active powers are still, 
A distant dearness in the hill, 

A secret sweetness in the stream, 

vi 
The limit of his narrower fate. 

While yet beside its vocal springs 
He play'd at counsellors and kings, 
With one that was his earliest mate ; 

vii 

Who ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labour of his hands, 
Or in the furrow musing stands ; 

< Does my old friend remember me ? ' 



IN MEMORIAM 95 



LXV 

i 
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt ; 

I lull a fancy trouble-tost 

With ' Love's too precious to be lost, 
A little grain shall not be spilt.' 

\\ 

And in that solace can I sing, 

Till out of painful phases wrought 
There flutters up a happy thought, 

Self-balanced on a lightsome wing : 



Since we deserved the name of friends, 
And thine effect so lives in me, 
A part of mine may live in thee 

And move thee on to noble ends. 



96 IN MEMORIAM 



LXVI 



You thoug^ht my heart too far diseased ; 
You wonder when my fancies play 
To find me gay among the gay, 

Like one with any trifle pleased. 

ii 

The shade by which my life was crost, 
Which makes a desert in the mind, 
Has made me kindly with my kind. 

And like to him whose sight is lost ; 



Whose feet are guided thro' the land, 

Whose jest among his friends is free. 
Who takes the children on his knee. 

And winds their curls about his hand : 

iv 
He plays with threads, he beats his chair 

For pastime, dreaming of the sky ; 

His inner day can never die, 
His night of loss is always there. 



IN MEMORIAM ^ 



LXVII 

i 

When on my bed the moonlight falls, 
I know that in thy place of rest 
By that broad water of the west, 

There comes a glory on the walls ; 



Thy marble bright in dark appears. 
As slowly steals a silver flame 
Along the letters of thy name, 

And o'er the number of thy years. 

iii 

The mystic glory swims away ; 

From off my bed the moonlight dies 
And closing eaves of wearied eyes 

I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : 

iv 

And then I know the mist is drawn 
A lucid veil from coast to coast. 
And in the dark church like a ghost 

Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. 



IN MEMORIAM 



LXVIII 



,1 
When in the down I sink my head, 

Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath ; 

Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death, 
Nor can I dream of thee as dead : 

ii 
I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, 

When all our path was fresh with dew. 

And all the bugle breezes blew 
Reveillee to the breaking morn. 

iii 

But what is this ? I turn about, 
I find a trouble in thine eye. 
Which makes me sad I know not why. 

Nor can my dream resolve the doubt : 

iv 

But ere the lark hath left the lea 

I wake, and I discern the truth ; 
It is the trouble of my youth 

That foolish sleep transfers to thee. 



IN MEMORIAM c99 



LXIX 

i 

I DREAM'd there would be Spring no more, 
That Nature's ancient power was lost : 
The streets were black with smoke and frost, 

They chatter'd trifles at the door : 

ii 

I wander'd from the noisy town, 

I found a wood with thorny boughs : 
I took the thorns to bind my brows, 

I wore them like a civic crown : 

iii 

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns 

From youth and babe and hoary hairs : 
They call'd me in the public squares 

The fool that wears a crown of thorns : 



They call'd me fool, they call'd me child : 
I found an angel of the night ; 
The voice was low, the look was bright ; 

He look'd upon my crown and smiled : 



Lore. 



IN ME MORI AM 

V 

He reach'd the glory of a hand, 

That seem'd to touch it into leaf: 
The voice was not the voice of grief, 

The words were hard to understand. 



IN MEMORIAM 



LXX 



1 
I CANNOT see the features right, 

When on the gloom I strive to paint 
The face I know ; the hues are faint 
And mix with hollow masks of night ; 



Cloud towers by ghostly masons wrought, - 
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, 
A hand that points, and palled shapes 

In shadowy thoroughfares of thought ; 

iii 
And crowds that stream from yawning doors, 

And shoals of pucker'd faces drive ; 

Dark bulks that tumble half alive, 
And lazy lengths on boundless shores ; 

iv 

Till all at once beyond the will 
I hear a wizard music roll, 
And thro' a lattice on the soul 

Looks thy fair face and makes it stilk 



.I02 JN MEMORIAM 



LXXI 



1 

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance 
And madness, thou hast forged at last 
A night-long Present of the Past 

In which we went thro' summer France. 

ii 

Hadst thou such credit with the soul ? 
Then bring an opiate trebly strong, 
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong 

That so my pleasure may be whole ; 

iii 

While now we talk as once we talk'd 

Of men and minds, the dust of change. 
The days that grow to something strange, 

In walking as of old we walk'd 

iv 

Beside the river's wooded reach. 

The fortress, and the mountain ridge. 
The cataract flashing from the bridge, 

The breaker breaking on the beach. 



'IN MEMORIAM J03 



LXXII 



RiSEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, 
And howlest, issuing out of night, 
With blasts that blow the poplar white, 

And lash with storm the streaming pane ? 

ii 

Day, when my crown'd estate begun 
To pine in that reverse of doom. 
Which sicken'd every living bloom. 

And blurr'd the splendour of the sun ; 



Who usherest in the dolorous hour 

With thy quick tears that make the rose 
Pull sideways, and the daisy close 

Her crimson fringes to the shower ; 



Who might'st have heaved a windless flame 
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd 
A chequer-work of beam and shade 

Along the hills, yet look'd the same. 



I04 'IN MEMORIAM 

V 

As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; 

Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime, 
When the dark hand struck down thro' time, 

And cancell'd nature's best : but thou, 

vi 

Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows 

Thro' clouds that drench the morning star, 
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar, 

And sow the sky with flying boughs, 

vii 
And up thy vault with roaring sound 

Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day ; 

Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray. 
And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 



AV ME MORI AM 105 



LXXIII 



1 

So many worlds, so much to do, 

So little done, such thing^s to be, 
How know I what had need of thee. 

For thou wert s,trong as thou wert true ? 

ii 

The fame is quench'd that I foresaw. 

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath 
I curse not nature, no, nor death ; 

For nothing is that errs from law. 

iii 

We pass ; the path that each man trod 
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : 
What fame is left for human deeds 

In endless age ? It rests with God. 

iv 

O hollow wraith of dying fame. 

Fade wholly, while the soul exults, 
And self-infolds the large results 

Of force that would have forged a name. 



io6 iN MEMORIAM 



LXXIV 

i 

As sometimes in a dead man's face, 

To those that watch it more and more, 
A hkeness, hardly seen before. 

Comes out — to some one of his race : 



So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 

I see thee what thou art, and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 

Thy kindred with the great of old. 

iii 

But there is more than I can see. 
And what I see I leave unsaid. 
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made 

His darkness beautiful with thee. 



IN MEMORIAM I07 



LXXV 



I LEAVE thy praises unexpress'd 

In verse that brings myself relief, 
And by the measure of my grief 

I leave thy greatness to be guess'd ; 



What practice howsoe'er expert 

In fitting aptest words to things, 
Or voice the richest-toned that sings, 

Hath power to give thee as thou wert ? 

iii 

I care not in these fading days 

To raise a cry that lasts not long, 

And round thee with the breeze of song 

To stir a little dust of praise. 

iv 

Thy leaf has perish'd in the green, 

And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
The world which credits what is done 

Is cold to all that might have been. 



jo3 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

So here shall silence guard thy fame ; 

But somewhere, out of human view, 
Whate'er thy hands are set to do 

Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 



IN MEMORIAM 109: 



LXXVI 

i. 

Take wings of fancy, and ascend, 
And in a moment set thy face 
Where all the starry heavens of space 

Are sharpen'd to a needle's end ; 



Take wings of foresight ; lighten thro' 
The secular abyss to come. 
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb 

Before the mouldering of a yew ; 

iii 

And if the matin songs, that woke 

The darkness of our planet, last, 
Thine own shall wither in the vast, 

Ere half the lifetime of an oak. 

iv 
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers 

With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; 

And what are they when these remain 
The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ? 



IN MEMORIAM 



LXXVII 



What hope is here for modern rhyme 
To him, who turns a musing eye 
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie 

Foreshorten'd in the tract of time ? 



These mortal lullabies of pain 

May bind a book, may line a box, 
May serve to curl a maiden's locks ; 

Or when a thousand moons shall wane 

iii 

A man upon a stall may find, 

And, passing, turn the* page that tells 
A grief, then changed to something else, 

Sung by a long-forgotten mind. 

iv 
But what of that ? My darken'd ways 

Shall ring with music all the same ; 

To breathe my loss is more than fame, 
To utter love more sweet than praise. 



IN MEMORIAM jii 



LXXVIII 

i 

Again at Christmas did we weave 

The holly round the Christmas hearth 
The silent snow possess'd the earth, 

And calmly fell our Christmas-eve : 

ii 

The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, 
No wing of wind the region swept, 
But over all things brooding slept 

The quiet sense of something lost 

iil 

As in the winters left behind, 

Again our ancient games had place, 
The mimic picture's breathing grace. 

And dance and song and hoodman-blind. 

iv 

Who show'd a token of distress ? 

No single tear, no mark of pain : 
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane ? 

O grief, can grief be changed to less ? 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

O last regret, regret can die ! 

No — mixt with all this mystic frame, 
Her deep relations are the same, 

But with long use her tears are dry. 



IN MEMORIAM 113 



LXXIX 



* IMORE than my brothers are to me,' — 
Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! 
I know thee of what force thou art 

To hold the costliest love in fee. 

ii 
But thou and I are one in kind, 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 

And hill and wood and field did print 
The same sweet forms in either mind. 

iii 

For us the same cold streamlet curl'd 

Thro' all his eddying coves ; the same 
All winds that roam the twilight came 

In whispers of the beauteous world. 

iv 

At one dear knee we proffer'd vows. 

One lesson from one book we learn'd, 

Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 

To black and brown on kindred brows. 

1 



114 f^ MEMORIAM 

V 

And so my wealth resembles thine, 

But he was rich where I was poor, 
And he supplied my want the more 

As his unlikeness fitted mine. 



IN MEMORIAM 115 



LXXX 



1 

If any vague desire should rise, 

That holy Death ere Arthur died 
Had moved me kindly from his side, 

And dropt the dust on tearless eyes ; . 

ii 

Then fancy shapes, as fancy can. 

The grief my loss in him had wrought, 
A grief as deep as life or thought, 

But stay'd in peace with God and man. 



I make a picture in the brain ; 

I hear the sentence that he speaks ; 

He bears the burthen of the weeks 
But turns his burthen into gain. 

iv 

His credit thus shall set me free ; 

And, influence-rich to soothe and save. 
Unused example from the grave 

Reach out dead hands to comfort me. 



ii6 I.N MEMORIAM 



LXXXI 

i 
Could I have said while he was here, 

' My love shall now no further range; 

There cannot come a mellower change, 
For now is love mature in ear ' ! 

ii 
Love, then, had hope of richer store : 

What end is here to my complaint ? 

This haunting whisper makes me faint, 
' More years had made me love thee more.' 

iii 

But Death returns an answer sweet : 

' My sudden frost was sudden gain, 
And gave all ripeness to the grain, 

It might have drawn from after-heat.' 



IN MEMORIAM 117 



LXXXII 



1 
I WAGE not any feud with Death 

For changes wrought on form and face ; 

No lower Hfe that earth's embrace 
May breed with him, can fright my faith. 



Eternal process moving on, 

From state to state the spirit walks ; 

And these are but the shatter'd stalks, 
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. 

iii 

Nor blame I Death, because he bare 
The use of virtue out of earth : 
I know transplanted human worth 

Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 

iv 
For this alone on Death I wreak 

The wrath that garners in my heart ; 

He put our lives so far apart 
We cannot hear each other speak. 



n8 IN MEMORIAM 



LXXXIII 



1 
Dip down upon the northern shore, 

O sweet new-year delaying long ; 

Thou doest expectant nature wrong ; 
Delaying long, delay no more. 

ii 
What stays thee from the clouded noons, 

Thy sweetness from its proper place ? 

Can trouble live with April days, 
Or sadness in the summer moons ? 

iii 

Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
The little speedwell's darling blue, 
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 

Laburnums, dropping- wells of fire. 

iv 

O thou, new-year, delaying long, 

Delayest the sorrow in my blood, 
That longs to burst a frozen bud 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 



IN MEMORIAM 1 19 



LXXXIV 



1 

When I contemplate all alone 

The life that had been thine below, 
And fix my thoughts on all the glow 

To which thy crescent would have grown 



I see thee sitting crown'd with good, 
A central warmth diffusing bliss 
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, 

On all the branches of thy blood ; 

iii 

Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine : 
For now the day was drawing on. 
When thou should'st link thy life with one 

Of mine own house, and boys of thine 

iv 

Had babbled ' Uncle ' on my knee ; 
But that remorseless iron hour 
Made cypress of her orange flower, 

Despair of Hope, and earth of thee. 



IN MEMORIAH. 

V 
I seem to meet their least desire, 

To dap their cheeks, to call them mine. 

I see their unborn faces shine 
Beside the never-lighted fire. 

vi 
I see myself an honour'd guest, 

Thy partner in the flowery walk 

Of letters, genial table-talk, 
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest ; 

vii 

While now thy prosperous labour fills 
The lips of men \\ ith honest praise, 
And sun by sun the happy days > 

Descend below the golden hills 

viii 

With promise of a morn as fair ; 

And all the train of bounteous hours 
Conduct by paths of growing powers, 

To reverence and the silver hair ; 

ix 
Till slowly worn her earthly robe. 

Her lavish mission richly wrought, 
. Leaving great legacies of thought. 
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ; 



'IN MEMORIAL 

X 

What time mine own might also flee, 

As hnk'd with thine in love and fate, 
And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait 

To the other shore, involved in thee, 

xi 

Arrive at last the blessed goal. 

And He that died in Holy Land 
Would reach us out the shining hand. 

And take us as a single soul. 

xii 

What reed was that on which I leant ? 

Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
The old bitterness again, and break 

The low beginnings of content. 



IN MEMORIAM 



LXXXV 



1 

This truth came borne with bier and pall, 
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most, 
'Tis better to have loved and lost, 

Than never to have loved at all 



O true in word, and tried in deed. 
Demanding, so to bring relief 
To this which is our common grief, 

What kind of life is that I lead ; 

iii 
And whether trust in things above 

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd ; 

And whether love for him have drain'd 
My capabilities of love ; 

iv 

Your words have virtue such as draws 
A faithful answer from the breast. 
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest. 

And loyal unto kindly laws. 



IN MEMORIAM 123 

V 

My blood an even tenor kept, 

Till on mine ear this message falls, 
That in Vienna's fatal walls 

God's finger touch'd him, and he slept. 

vi 
The great Intelligences fair 

That range above our mortal state, 

In circle round the blessed gate, 
Received and gave him welcome there ; 

vii 

And led him thro' the blissful climes. 

And show'd him in the fountain fresh 
All knowledge that the sons of flesh 

Shall gather in the cycled times. 

viii 
But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim. 

Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth. 

To wander on a darken'd earth, 
Where all things round me breathed of him. 

ix 

O friendship, equal-poised control, 

O heart, with kindliest motion warm, 
O sacred essence, other form, 

O solemn ghost, O crowned soul ! 



124 ^^V MEMORIAM 

X 

Yet none could better know than I, 

How much of act at human hands 
The sense of human will demands 

By which we dare to liv-e or die. 

xi 

Whatever way my days decline, 
I felt and feci, tho' left alone, 
His being- working in mine own, 

The footsteps of his life in mine ; 

xii 

A life that all the Muses deck'd 

With gifts of grace, that might express 
All-comprehensive tenderness. 

All-subtilising intellect : 

xili 

And so my passion hath not swerved 
To works of weakness, but I find 
An image comforting the mind, 

And in my grief a strength reserved. 

xiv 

Likewise the imaginative woe. 

That loved to handle spiritual strife. 
Diffused the shock thro' all my life, 

But in the present broke the blow. 



IN MEMORIAM 125 

XV 

My pulses therefore beat again 

For other friends that once I met ; 
Nor can it suit me to forget 

The mighty hopes that make us men. 

xvi 
I woo your love : I count it crime 

To mourn for any overmuch ; 

I, the divided half of such 
A friendship as had master'd Time ; 

xvii 
Which masters Time indeed, and is 
Eternal, separate from fears : 
The all-assuming months and years 
Can take no part away from this : 

xviii 

But Summer on the steaming floods, 

And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, 
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, 

That gather in the waning woods, 

xix 
And every pulse of wind and wave 

Recalls, in change of light or gloom. 

My old affection of the tomb. 
And my prime passion in the grave : 



126 IN MEMORIAM 

XX 

My old affection of the tomb, 

A part of stillness, yearns to speak : 
' Arise, and get thee forth and seek 

A friendship for the years to come. 

xxi 
' I watch thee from the quiet shore ; 

Thy spirit up to mine can reach ; 

But in dear words of human speech 
We two communicate no more.' 

XX ii 
And I, ' Can clouds of nature stain 

The starry clearness of the free ? 

How is it .^ Canst thou feel for me 
Some painless sympathy with pain t ' 

xxiii 
And lightly does the whisper fall ; 

* 'Tis hard for thee to fathom this ; 

I triumph in conclusive bliss, 
And that serene result of all.' 

xxiv 

So hold I commerce with the dead ; 

Or so methinks the dead would say 
Or so shall grief with symbols play 

And pining life be fancy-fed. 



IN MEMORIAM 127 

XXV 

Now looking to some settled end, 

That these things pass, and I shall prove 
A meeting somewhere, love with love, 

I crave your pardon, O my friend ; 

xxvi 

If not so fresh, with love as true, 
I, clasping brother-hands, aver 
I could not, if I would, transfer 

The whole I felt for him to you. 

xxvii 
For which be they that hold apart 

The promise of the golden hours ? 

First love, first friendship, equal powers, 
That marry with the virgin heart. 

xxvii i 

Still mine, that cannot but deplore, 
That beats within a lonely place. 
That yet remembers his embrace, 

But at his footstep leaps no more, 

xxix 

My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest 
Quite in the love of what is gone, 
But seeks to beat in time with one 

That warms another living breast. 



128 IN MEMORIAM 

XXX 

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring, 

Knowing the primrose yet is dear, 
The primrose of the later year. 

As not unlike to that of Spring. 



IN ME MORI AM 129 



LXXXVI 



1 

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 

That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 

And meadow, slowly breathing bare 

ii 

The round of space, and rapt below 
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, 
And shadowing down the horned flood 

In ripples, fan my brows and blow 

iii 

The fever from my cheek, and sigh 

The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, 

111 brethren, let the fancy fly 

iv 
From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odour streaming far, 

To where in yonder orient star 
A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace.' 



r3o IN MEMORIAM 

\ 



, LXXXVII 

i 
I PAST beside the reverend walls 

In which of old I wore the gown ; 

I roved at random thro' the town, 
And saw the tumult of the halls ; 

ii 

And heard once more in college fanes 

The storm their high-built organs make, 
And thunder-music, rolling, shake 

The prophet blazon'd on the panes ; 

iii 

And caught once more the distant shout. 
The measured pulse of racing oars 
Among the willows ; paced the shores 

And many a bridge, and all about 

iv 

The same gray flats again, and felt 

The same, but not the same ; and last 
Up that long walk of limes I past 

To see the rooms in which he dwelt. 



IN MEMORIAM 131 

V 

Another name was on the door : 

I Hnger'd ; all within was noise 

Of songs, and dapping hands, and boys 

That crash'd the glass and beat the floor ; 

vi 

Where once we held debate, a band 

Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
And labour, and the changing mart, 

And all the framework of the land ; 

vii 
When one would aim an arrow fair. 

But send it slackly from the string ; 

And one would pierce an outer ring 
And one an inner, here and there ; 

viii 

And last the master-bowman, he. 

Would cleave the mark. A willing ear 
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear 

The rapt oration flowing free 

ix 

From point to point, with power and grace 
And music in the bounds of law, 
To those conclusions when we saw 

The God within him light his face. 



132 IN MEMORIAM 

X 

And seem to lift the form, and glow 
In azure orbits heavenly-wise ; 
And over those ethereal eyes 

The bar of Michael Angelo. 



IN MEMORIAM 



133 



LXXXVIII 

i 

Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, 
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, 
O tell me where the senses mix, 

O tell me where the passions meet, 



Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ 
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, 
And in the midmost heart of grief 

Thy passion clasps a secret joy : 



And I — my harp would prelude woe — 
I cannot all command the strings ; 
The glory of the sum of things 

Will flash along the chords and go. 



134 IN MEMORIAM 



LXXXIX 

i 
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor 

Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; 

And thou, with all thy breadth and height 
Of foliage, towering sycamore ; 

ii 
How often, hither wandering down, 

My Arthur found your shadows fair, 
And shook to all the liberal air 
The dust and din and steam of town : 



He brought an eye for all he saw ; 

He mixt in all our simple sports ; 

They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts 
And dusty purlieus of the law. 

iv 

O joy to him in this retreat, 

Immantled in ambrosial dark. 
To drink the cooler air, and mark 

The landscape winking thro' the heat : 



IN ME MORI AM 135 

V 

O sound to rout the brood of cares, 

The sweep of scythe in morning dew, 
The gust that round the garden flew, 

And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! 

vi 

O bliss, when all in circle drawn 

About him, heart and ear were fed 
To hear him, as he lay and read 

The Tuscan poets on the lawn : 

vii 

Or in the all-golden afternoon 

A guest, or happy sister, sung, 

Or here she brought the harp and flung 

A ballad to the brightening moon : 

viii 

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods. 
Beyond the bounding hill to stray, 
And break the livelong summer day 

With banquet in the distant woods ; 

ix 

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, 
Discuss'd the books to love or hate, 
Or totich'd the changes of the state, 

Or threaded some Socratic dream ; 



136 IN MEMORIAM 

X 

But if I praised the. busy town, 

He loved to rail against it still, 
For ' ground in yonder social mill 

We rub each other's angles down, 

xi 

* And merge ' he said * in form and gloss 
The picturesque of man and man.' 
We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran, 

The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss, 

xii 

Or cool'd within the glooming wave ; 
And last, returning from afar 
Before the crimson-circled star 

Had fall'n into her father's grave, 

xiii 

And brushing ankle deep in flowers. 

We heard behind the woodbine veil 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 

And buzzings of the honied hours. 



IN MEMORIAM 137 



xc 



He tasted love with half his mind, 

Nor ever drank the inviolate spring 
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling 

This bitter seed among mankind ; 

ii 

That could the dead, whose dying eyes 

Were closed with wail, resume their life, 
They would but find in child and wife 

An iron welcome when they rise : 

iii 

'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine. 
To pledge them with a kindly tear. 
To talk them o'er, to wish them here. 

To count their memories half divine : 



But if they came who past away. 

Behold their brides in other hands ; 
The hard heir strides about their lands, 

And will not yield them for a day. 



138 IN MEMO R I AM 

V 

Yea, tho' their sons were none of these, 

Not less the yet-loved sire would make 
Confusion worse than death, and shake 

The pillars of domestic peace. 

vi 

Ah dear, but come thou back to me : 

Whatever change the years have wrought, 
I find not yet one lonely thought 

That cries against my wish for thee. 



IN MEMORIAM 139 



XCI 



When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, 

And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; 
Or underneath the barren bush 

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March ; 

ii 
Come, wear the form by which I know 

Thy spirit in time among thy peers ; 

The hope of unaccomplish'd years 
Be large and lucid round thy brow. 

iii 

When summer's hourly-mellowing change 
May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 

That ripple round the lonely grange ; 

iv 

Come : not in watches of the night. 

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, 
Come, beauteous in thine after form, 

And like a finer light in light. 



140 IN MEMOKIAM 



XCII 



If any vision should reveal 

Thy likeness, I might count it vain 
As but the canker of the brain ; 

Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal 

ii 

To chances where our lots were cast 
Together in the days behind, 
I might but say, I hear a wind 

Of memory murmuring the past. 

iii 
Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view 

A fact within the coming year ; 

And tho' the months, revolving near, 
Should prove the phantom-warning true, 



They might not seem thy prophecies. 
But spiritual presentiments, 
And such refraction of events 

As often rises ere they rise. 



IN MEMORIAM 141 



XCIII 



1 

I SHALL not see thee. Dare I say 
No spirit ever brake the band 
That stays him from the native land 

Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay? 

ii 

No visual shade of some one lost, 

But he, the Spirit himself, may come 
Where all the nerve of sense is numb ; 

Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. 

iii 

O, therefore from thy sightless range 
With gods in unconjectured bliss, 
O, from the distance of the abyss 

Of tenfold-complicated change, 

iv 

Descend, and touch, and enter ; hear 

The wish too strong for words to name 
That in this blindness of the frame 

My Ghost may feel that thine is near. 



142 IN MEMORIAM 



XCIV 



1 

How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 

An hour's communion with the dead. 

ii 

In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 

My spirit is at peace with all. 

iii 
They haunt the silence of the breast, 

Imaginations calm and fair. 

The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest : 

iv 
But when the heart is full of din, 

And doubt beside the portal waits. 

They can but listen at the gates. 
And hear the household jar within. 



IN MEMO RI AM 143 



XCV 



1 

By night we linger'd on the lawn, 

For underfoot the herb was dry ; 
And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky 

The silvery haze of summer drawn ; 

ii 

And calm that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering : not a cricket chirr'd : 
The brook alone far-off was heard, 

And on the board the fluttering urn : 

iii 

And bats went round in fragrant skies, 
And wheel'd or lit tl e filmy shapes 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ; 

iv 

While now we sang old songs that peal'd 

From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease, 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field. 



[44 AV MEMORIAM 

V 

But when those others, one by one, 

Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
And in the house light after light 

Went out, and I was all alone, 

vi 

A hunger seized my heart ; I read 

Of that glad year which once had been, 
In those fall'n leaves which kept their green, 

The noble letters of the dead : * 

vii 

And strangely on the silence broke 

The silent-speaking words, and strange 
Was love's dumb cry defying change 

To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 

viii 
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell 

On doubts that drive the coward back. 
And keen thro' wordy snares to track 
Suggestion to her inmost cell. 

ix 

So word by word, and line by line. 

The dead man touch'd me from the past, 
And all at once it seem'd at last 

The living soul was flash'd on mine. 



IN MEMORIAM 145 

X 

And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd 
About empyreal heights of thought, 
And came on that which is, and caught 

The deep pulsations of the world, 

xi 

yEonian music measuring out 

The steps of Time —the shocks of Chance — 
The blows of Death. At length my trance 
thi 

xii 
Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame 

In matter-moulded forms of speech, 

Or ev'n for intellect to reach 
Thro' memory that which I became : 

xiii 

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd 

The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease. 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field : 

xiv 
And suck'd from out the distant gloom 
A breeze began to tremble o'er 
The large leaves of the sycamore, 
And fluctuate all the still perfume, 



146 IN ME MORI AM 

XV 

And gathering freshlier overhead, 

Rock'd the full-fohaged elms, and swung 
The heavy-folded rose, and flung 

The lilies to and fro, and said 

xvi 

' The dawn, the dawn, and died away ; 

And East and West, without a breath, 
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 

To broaden into boundless day. 



IN MEMORIAM 147 



XCVI 



You say, but with no touch of scorn, 

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-bhie eyes 
Are tender over drowning flies, 

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 

ii 

I know not : one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 

But ever strove to make it true : 

iii 
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

iv 

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind, 
He faced the spectres of the mind 

And laid them : thus he came at length 



t48 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the Hght, 

And dwells not in the light alone, 

vi 
But in the darkness and the cloud. 
As over Sinai's peaks of old. 
While Israel made their gods of gold, 
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. 



IN ME MORI AM 149 



XCVII 



I 

Mv love has talk'd with rocks and trees ; 
He finds on misty mountain-ground 
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd ; 

He sees himself in all he sees. 

ii 

Two partners of a married life — 

I look'd on these and thought of thee 
In vastness and in mystery, 

And of my spirit as of a wife. 



HI 

These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, 
Their hearts of old have beat in tune, 
Their meetings made December June 

Their every parting was to die. 



IV 

Their love has never past away ; 
The days she never can forget 
Are earnest that he loves her yet, 

Whate'er the faithless people say. 



ISO AV MEMORIAM 

V 

Her life is lone, he sits apart, 

He loves her yet, she will not weep, 
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep 

He seems to slight her simple heart. 

vi 

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 
He reads the secret of the star. 
He seems so near and yet so far. 

He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 

vii 

She keeps the gift of years before, 
A wither'd violet is her bliss : 
She knows not what his greatness is, 

For that, for all, she loves him more. 

viii 
For him she plays, to him she sings 

Of early faith and plighted vows ; 

She knows but matters of the house. 
And he, he knows a thousand things. 

ix 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move. 

She darkly feels him great and wise, 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 

' I cannot understand : I love.' 



IN ME MORI AM 151 



XCVIII 

i 

You leave us : you will see the Rhine, 
And those fair hills I sail'd below, 
When I was there with him ; and go 

By summer belts of wheat and vine 

ii 

To where he breathed his latest breath. 
That City. All her splendour seems 
No livelier than the wisp that gleams 

On Lethe in the eyes of Death. 



Let her great Danube rolling fair 

Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me : 
I have not seen, I will not see 

Vienna ; rather dream that there, 

iv 

A treble darkness, Evil haunts 

The birth, the bridal ; friend from friend 
Is oftener parted, fathers bend 

Above more graves, a thousand wants 



152 



IN MEMORIAM 



V 

Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey 

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings 
Her shadow on the blaze of kings : 

And yet myself have heard him say, 

vi 

That not in any mother town 

With statelier progress to and fro 
The double tides of chariots flow 

By park and suburb under brown 

vii 

Of lustier leaves ; nor more content, 
He told me, lives in any crowd. 
When all is gay with lamps, and loud 

With sport and song, in booth and tent, 

viii 
Imperial halls, or open plain ; 

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks 

The rocket molten into flakes 
Of crimson or in emerald rain. 



IN MEMOklAM IS3 



XCIX 



1 

RiSEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, 
So loud with voices of the birds, 
So thick with lowings of the herds, 

Day, when I lost the flower of men ; 

ii 

Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red 

On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast 
By meadows breathing of the past, 

And woodlands holy to the dead ; 

iii 

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves 

A song that slights the coming care. 
And Autumn laying here and there 

A fiery finger on the leaves ; 



Who wakenest with thy balmy breath 
To myriads on the genial earth, 
Memories of bridal, or of birth, 

And unto myriads more, of death. 



154 ^^ MEMORIAM 



O wheresoever those may be, 

Betwixt the slumber of the poles, 
To-day they count as kindred souls 

They know me not but mourn with me. 



IN ME MORI AM 155 



1 

I CLIMB the hill : from end to end 
Of all the landscape underneath, 
I find no place that does not breathe 

Some gracious memory of my friend ; 

ii 

No gray old grange, or lonely fold, 

Or low morass and whispering reed, 
Or simple stile from mead to mead, 

Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; 

iii 

Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw 

That hears the latest linnet trill, 
Nor quarry trench'd along the hill 

And haunted by the wrangling daw ; 

iv 

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock ; 

Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves 

To left and right thro' meadowy curves, 

That feed the mothers of the flock ; 



156 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

But each has pleased a kindred eye, 
And each reflects a kindlier day ; 
And, leaving these, to pass away, 

I think once more he seems to die. 



IN MEMORIAM 157 



CI 



1 

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway, 
The tender blossom flutter down, 
Unloved, that beech will gather brown, 

This maple burn itself away ; 

ii 

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 

Ray round with flames her disk of seed, 
And many a rose-carnation feed 

With summer spice the humming air ; 

iii 

Unloved, by many a sandy bar, 

The brook shall babble down the plain, 
At noon or when the lesser wain 

Is twisting round the polar star ; 

iv 
Uncared for, gird the windy grove. 

And flood the haunts of hern and crake 

Or into silver arrows break 
The sailing moon in creek and cove ; 



158 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Till from the garden and the wild 

A fresh association blow, 

And year by year the landscape grow 
Familiar to the stranger's child ; 

vi 
As year by year the labourer tills 

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades ; 

And year by year our memory fades 
From all the circle of the hills. 



IN MEMORIAM 159 



CII 



We leave the well-beloved place 

Where first we gazed upon the sky ; 
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, 

Will shelter one of stranger race. 

ii 

We go, but ere we go from home, 

As down the garden-walks I move. 
Two spirits of a diverse love 

Contend for loving masterdom. 

iii 

One whispers, ' Here thy boyhood sung 

Long since its matin song, and heard 
The low love-language of the bird 

In native hazels tassel-hung.' 

iv 

The other answers, ' Yea, but here 

Thy feet have stray'd in after hours 
With thy lost friend among the bowers, 

And this hath made them trebly dear.' 



i6o IN MEMORIAM 



These two have striven half the day, 

And each prefers his separate claim, 
Poor rivals in a losing game. 

That will not yield each other way. 

vi 
I turn to go : my feet are set 

To leave the pleasant fields and farms ; 

They mix in one another's arms 
To one pure image of regret. 



IN MEMORIAM 161 



cm 



On that last night before we went 

From out the doors where I was bred, 
I dream'd a vision of the dead, 

Which left my after-morn content. 



Methought I dwelt within a hall, 

And maidens with me : distant hills 
From hidden summits fed with rills 

A river sliding by the wall. 

ill 

The hall with harp and carol rang. 

They sang of what is wise and good 
And graceful. In the centre stood 

A statue veil'd, to which they sang ; 

iv 

And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me. 

The shape of him I loved, and love 

For ever : then flew in a dove 

And brought a summons from the sea : 

M 



i62 IN MEMORIAM 

V 
And when they learnt that I must go 

They wept and wail'd, but led the way 

To where a little shallop lay 
At anchor in the flood below ; 

vi 

And on by many a level mead, 

And shadowing bluff that made the banks, 
We glided winding under ranks 

Of iris, and the golden reed ; 

vii 

And still as vaster grew the shore 

And roll'd the floods in grander space. 
The maidens gather'd strength and grace 

And presence, lordlier than before ; 

viii 
And I myself, who sat apart 

And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb ; 

I felt the thews of Anakim, 
The pulses of a Titan's heart ; 

ix 

As one would sing the death of war, 
And one would chant the history 
Of that great race, which is to be, 

And one the shaping of a star ; 



IN MEMORIAM 163 

X 

Until the forward-creeping tides 

Began to foam, and we to draw 
From deep to deep, to where we saw 

A great ship lift her shining sides. 

xi 

The man we loved was there on deck, 
But thrice as large as man he bent 
To greet us. Up the side I went, 

And fell in silence on his neck : 

xii 

Whereat those maidens with one mind 

Bewail'd their lot ; I did them wrong : 
' We served thee here,' they said, ' so long. 

And wilt thou leave us now behind ? ' 

xiii 
So rapt I was, they could not win 

An answer from my lips, but he 

Replying, * Enter likewise ye 
And go with us : ' they enter'd in. 

xiv 

And while the wind began to sweep 
A music out of sheet and shroud. 
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud 

That landlike slept along the deep. 



i64 IN ME MORI AM 



CIV 

i 

The time draws near the birth of Christ 
The moon is hid, the night is still ; 
A single church below the hill 

Is pealing, folded in the mist. 



A single peal of bells below. 

That wakens at this hour of rest 
A single murmur in the breast, 

That these are not the bells I know. 

iii 

Like strangers' voices here they sound. 

In lands where not a memory strays, 
Nor landmark breathes of other days. 

But all is new unhallow'd ground. 



IN MEMORIAL 165 



cv 



1 

To-NIGHT ungather'd let us leave 

This laurel, let this holly stand : 
We live within the stranger's land, 

And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. 

ii 

Our father's dust is left alone 

And silent under other snows : 

There in due time the woodbine blows, ^ 

The violet comes, but we are gone. 

iii 
No more shall wayward grief abuse 

The genial hour with mask and mime ; 

For change of place, like growth of time. 
Has broke the bond of dying use. 

iv 

Let cares that petty shadows cast, 

By which our lives are chiefly proved, 
A little spare the night I loved. 

And hold it solemn to the past. 



i66 IN ME MORI AM 

V 

But let no footstep beat the floor, 

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm ; 
For who would keep an ancient form 

Thro' which the spirit breathes no more ? 

vi 
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ; 

Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown ; 

No dance, no motion, save alone 
What lightens in the lucid east 

vii 
Of rising worlds by yonder wood. 

Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; 

Run out your measured arcs, and lead 
The closing cycle rich in good. 



IN ME MORI AM 167 



CVI 



1 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light : 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

ii 

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 

Ring, happy bells, across the snow 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ringr out the faise, ring: in the true. 



Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

iv 
Ring out a slowly dying cause. 

And ancient forms of party strife ; 

Ring in the nobler modes of life, 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 



i68 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Ring- out the want, the care, the sin, 

The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, 

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 

vi 
Ring out false pride in place and blood, 

The civic slander and the spite ; 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Rintr in the common love of ij^ood. 



Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold, 
Ring out the thousand wars of old. 

Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

viii 
Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 

Ring out the darkness of the land. 
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 



IN MEMORJAM 169 



CVII 



It is the day when he was born, 

A bitter day that early sank 

Behind a purple-frosty bank 
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn. 

ii 

The time admits not flowers or leaves 

To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies 
The blast of North and East, and ice 

Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves, 

iii 

And bristles all the brakes and thorns 
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs 
Above the wood which grides and clangs 

Its leafless ribs and iron horns 

iv 

Together, in the drifts that pass 

To darken on the rolling brine 

That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, 

Arrange the board and brim the glass ; 



170 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Bring in great logs and let them lie, 
To make a solid core of heat ; 
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat 

Of all things ev'n as he were by ; 



We keep the day. With festal cheer, 
With books and music, surely we 
Will drink to him, whate'er he be, 

And sing the songs he loved to hear. 



IN MEMORIAM 171 



CVIII 



I WILL not shut me from my kind, 

And, lest I stiffen into stone, 

I will not eat my heart alone, 
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind : 

ii 

What profit lies in barren faith, 

And vacant yearning, tho' with might 
To scale the heaven's highest height, 

Or dive below the wells of Death ? 

ill 

What find I in the highest place, 

But mine own phantom chanting hymns ? 

And on the depths of death there swims 
The reflex of a human face. 

iv 

I'll rather take what fruit may be 
Of sorrow under human skies : 
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, 

Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. 



172 IN MEMO R I AM 



CIX 



1 
Heart-affluence in discursive talk 

From household fountains never dry ; 

The critic clearness of an eye, 
That saw thro' all the Muses' walk ; 

ii 

Seraphic intellect and force 

To seize and throw the doubts of man ; 
> Impassion'd logic, which outran 
The hearer in its fiery course ; 

iii 
High nature amorous of the good, 

But touch"d with no ascetic gloom ; 

And passion pure in snowy bloom 
Thro' all the years of April blood ; 

iv 

A love of freedom rarely felt, 

Of freedom in her regal seat 

Of England ; not the schoolboy heat, 

The blind hysterics of the Celt ; 



IN MEMORIAM 173 

V 

And manhood fused with female grace 

In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 

And find his comfort in thy face ; 

vi 

All these have been, and thee mine eyes 

Have look'd on : if they look'd in vain. 
My shame is greater who remain, 

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. 



174 



IN MEMORIAM 



cx 



I 

Thy converse drew us with delight. 

The men of rathe and riper years : 
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, 

Forgot his weakness in thy sight. 



On thee the loyal-hearted hung, 

The proud was half disarm'd of pride, 
Nor cared the serpent at thy side 

To flicker with his double tongue. 

iii 

The stern were mild when thou wert by, 
The flippant put himself to school 
And heard thee, and the brazen fool 

Was soften'd, and he knew not why ; 

iv 
While I, thy nearest, sat apart, 

And felt thy triumph was as mine ; 

And loved them more, that they were thine. 
The graceful tact, the Christian art ; 



IN MEMORIAM 175 

V 

Nor mine the sweetness or the skill, 

But mine the love that will not tire, 
And, born of love, the vague desire 

That spurs an imitative will. 



176 IN MEMORIAM 



CXI 



1 

The churl in spirit, up or down 

Along the scale of ranks, thro' all, 
To him who grasps a golden ball, 

By blood a king, at heart a clown ; 

ii 

The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil 

His want in forms for fashion's sake, 
Will let his coltish nature break 

At seasons thro' the gilded pale : 

iii 
For who can always act ? but he, 

^To whom a thousand memories call, 
Not being less but more than all 
The gentleness he seem'd to be, 

iv 

Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd 
Each office of the social hour 
To noble manners, as the flower 

And native growth of noble mind ; 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Nor ever narrowness or spite, 
Or villain fancy fleeting by, 
Drew in the expression of an eye. 

Where God and Nature met in light : 

vi 

And thus he bore without abuse 

The grand old name of gentleman. 
Defamed by every charlatan, 

And soil'd with all ignoble use. 



177 



178 IN MEMORIAM 



CXII 



1 
High wisdom holds my wisdom less, 

That I, who gaze with temperate eyes 

On glorious insufficiencies, 
Set light by narrower perfectness. 

ii 

But thou, that fillest all the room 
Of all my love, art reason why 
I seem to cast a careless eye 

On souls, the lesser lords of doom. 

iii 

For what wert thou ? some novel power 
Sprang up for ever at a touch, 
And hope could never hope too much, 

In watching thee from hour to hour, 

iv 

Large elements in order brought. 

And tracts of calm from tempest made. 
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd 

In vassal tides that follow'd thous^ht. 



IN MEMOR/AM 179 



CXIII 



1 

'TiS held that sorrow makes us wise ; 

Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee 
Which not alone had guided me, 

But served the seasons that may rise ; 

ii 

For can I doubt, who knew thee keen 
In intellect, with force and skill 
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — 

I doubt not what thou wouldst have been : 

iii 

A life in civic action warm, 

A soul on highest mission sent, 
A potent voice of Parliament, 

A pillar steadfast in the storm, 



Should licensed boldness gather force. 
Becoming, when the time has birth, 
A lever to uplift the earth 

And roll it in another course, 



i8o IN MEMORIAM 

V 

With thousand shocks that come and go, 
With agonies, with energies, 
With overthrowings, and with cries 

And undulations to and fro. 



IN MEMORIAM 



CXIV 



1 

Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 

Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 

ii 

But on her forehead sits a fire : 

She sets her forward countenance 
And leaps into the future chance, 

Submitting all things to desire. 

iii 
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — 

She cannot fight the fear of death. 

What is she, cut from love and faith, 

But some wild Pallas from the brain 

« 

iv 

Of Demons ? fiery-hot to burst 

All barriers in her onward race 

For power. Let her know her place ; 

She is the second, not the first. 



i82 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

A higher hand must make her mild, 
If all be not in vain ; ^and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 

With wisdom, like the younger child : 

vi 

For she is earthly of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
O, friend, who camest to thy goal 

So early, leaving me behind, 

vii 

I would the great world grew like thee. 
Who grewest not alone in power 
And knowledge, but by year and hour 

In reverence and in charity. 



IN MEMORIAM 183 



cxv 



Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

ii 

Now rings the woodland loud and long. 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And drown'd in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 

iii 

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea. 
The flocks ar^ whiter down the vale. 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea ; 

iv 

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood : that live their lives 



i84 JN MEMORIAM 



From land to land ; and in my breast 
Spring wakens too ; and my regret 
Becomes an April violet, 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 



IN MEMORIAM 185 



CXVI 



Is it, then, regret for buried time 

That keenlier in sweet April wakes, 
And meets the year, and gives and takes 

The colours of the crescent prime ? 

ii 

Not all : the songs, the stirring air, 
The life re-orient out of dust. 
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust 

In that which made the world so fair. 

iii 
Not all regret : the face will shine 

Upon me, while I muse alone ; 

And that dear voice, I once have known. 
Still speak to me of me and mine : 

iv 
Yet less of sorrow lives in me 

For days of happy commune dead ; 

Less yearning for the friendship fled. 
Than some strong bond which is to be. 



i86 IN MEMORIAM 



CXVII 



O DAYS and hours, your work is this, 
To hold me from my proper place, 
A little while from his embrace, 

For fuller gain of after bliss : 

ii 
That out of distance might ensue 

Desire of nearness doubly sweet ; 

And unto meeting when we meet, 
Delight a hundredfold accrue, 

iii 

For every grain of sand that runs, 

And every span of shade that steals. 
And every kiss of toothed wheels. 

And all the courses of the suns. 



IN MEMORIAM 187 



CXVIII 



Contemplate all this work of Time, 
The giant labouring in his youth ; 
Nor dream of human love and truth, 

As dying Nature's earth and lime ; 

ii 

But trust that those we call the dead 
Are breathers of an ampler day 
For ever nobler ends. They say, 

The solid earth whereon we tread 

iii 

In tracts of fluent heat began, 

And grew to seeming-random forms, 
And seeming prey of cyclic storms, 

Till at the last arose the man ; 

iv 

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, 
The herald of a higher race. 
And of himself in higher place, 

If so he type this work of time 



i88 JN MEMORIAM 

V 

Within himself, from more to more ; 

Or, crown'd with attributes of woe 
Like glories, move his course, and show 

That life is not as idle ore. 



But iron dug from central gloom. 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 

vii 
To shape and use. Arise and fly 

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; 

Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die. 



IN MEMORIAM 189 



CXIX 



Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
So quickly, not as one that weeps 
I come once more ; the city sleeps ; 

I smell the meadow in the street ; 

ii 

I hear a chirp of birds ; I see 

Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn 
A light-blue lane of early dawn. 

And think of early days and thee, 

iii 
And bless thee, for thy Hps are bland, 

And bright the friendship of thine eye ; 

And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 
I take the pressure of thine hand. 



igo JN MEMORIAM 



cxx 

i 

I TRUST I have not wasted breath : 
I think we are not wholly brain, 
Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, 

Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ; 

ii 

Not only cunning casts in clay : ' 

Let Science prove we are, and then 
What matters Science unto men. 

At least to me ? I would not stay. 

iii 

Let him, the wiser man who springs 

Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action like the greater ape. 

But I was born to other things. 



IN MEMORIAM .-191 



CXXI 



1 

Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun 

And ready, thou, to die with him. 
Thou watchest all things ever dim 

And dimmer, and a glory done : 



The team is loosen'd from the wain, 

The boat is drawn upon the shore ; 
Thou listenest to the closing door, 

And life is darken'd in the brain. 



Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night, 

By thee the world's great work is heard 
Beginning, and the wakeful bird ; 

Behind thee comes the greater light : 

iv 
The market boat is on the stream, 

And voices hail it from the brink ; 

Thou hear'st the village hammer clink. 
And see'st the moving of the team. 



192 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name 
For what is one, the first, the last. 
Thou, like my present and my past, 

Thy place is changed ; thou art the same. 



IN MEMORIAM 193 



CXXII 



Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, 
While I rose up against my doom, 
And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom, 

To bare the eternal Heavens again, 

ii 

To feel once more, in placid awe. 
The strong imagination roll 
A sphere of stars about my soul 

In all her motion one with law ; 

iii 

If thou wert with me, and the grave 
Divide us not, be with me now, 
And enter in at breast and brow, 

Till all my blood, a fuller wave, 

iv 

Be quicken'd with a livelier breath, 
And like an inconsiderate boy, 
As in the former flash of joy, 

I slip the thoughts of life and death \ 



194 J^ MEMORIAM 

V 

And all the breeze of Fancy blows, 

And every dew-drop paints a bow, 
The wizard lightnings deeply glow, 

And every thought breaks out a rose. 



IN MEMORIAM 



■I9S 



CXXIII 



There rolls the deep where grew the tree. 

O earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 

There where the long street roars, hath been 
The stillness of the central sea. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 

From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands. 

Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 

iii 
But in my spirit will I dwell. 

And dream my dream, and hold it true ; 

For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, 
I cannot think the thing farewell. 



196 IN MEMORIAM 



CXXIV 



1 

That which we dare invoke to bless ; 

Our dearest faith ; our ghasthest doubt 
He, They, One, All ; within, without ; 

The Power in darkness whom we guess ; 

ii 
I found Him not in world or sun, 

Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 

Nor thro' the questions men may try, 
The petty cobwebs we have spun : 

iii 

If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 

I heard a voice ' believe no more ' 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 

That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 

iv 

A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 

Stood up and answer'd ' I have felt.' 



IN MEMORIAM 197 

V 

No, like a child in doubt and fear : 

But that blind clamour made me wise ; 
Then was I as a child that cries, 

But, crying, knows his father near ; 

vi 
And what I am beheld again 

What is, and no man understands ; 

And out of darkness came the hands 
That reach thro' nature, moulding men. 



198 • IN MEMORIAM 



cxxv 



1 

Whatever I have said or sung, 

Some bitter notes my harp would give, 
Yea, tho' there often seem'd to Hve 

A contradiction on the tongue, 

ii 
Yet Hope had never lost her youth ; 

She did but look through dimmer eyes ; 

Or Love but play'd with gracious lies, 
Because he felt so fix'd in truth : 

iii 

And if the song were full of care, 

He breathed the spirit of the song ; 
And if the words were sweet and strong 

He set his royal signet there ; 

iv 

Abiding with me till I sail 

To seek thee on the mystic deeps, 
And this electric force, that keeps 

A thousand pulses dancing, fail. 



IN MEMORIAM ,199 



CXXVI 



Love is and was my Lord and King, 
And in his presence I attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend, 

Which every hour his couriers bring. 



Love is and was my King and Lord, 
And will be, tho' as yet I keep 
Within his court on earth, and sleep 

Encompass'd by his faithful guard, 

iii 

And here at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the worlds of space, 

In the deep night, that all is well. 



IN MEMORIAM 



CXXVII 



1 

And all is well, tho' faith and form 
Be sunder'd in the night of fear ; 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 

A deeper voice across the storm, 

ii 

Proclaiming social truth shall spread, 
And justice, ev'n tho' thrice again 
The red fool-fury of the Seine 

Should pile her barricades with dead. 

iii 

But ill for him that wears a crown, 
And him, the lazar, in his rags : 
They tremble, the sustaining crags ; 

The spires of ice are toppled down, 

iv 

And molten up, and roar in flood ; 

The fortress crashes from on high. 
The brute earth lightens to the sky, 

And the great v^^on sinks in blood. 



IN MEMORIAM 

V 

And compass'd by the fires of Hell ; 

While thou, dear spirit, happy star, 
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, 

And smilest, knowing all is well. 



IN MEMORIAM 



CXXVIII 



The love that rose on stronger wings, 
Unpalsied when he met with Death, 
Is comrade of the lesser faith 

That sees the course of human things. 

ii 

No doubt vast eddies in the flood 

Of onward time shall yet be made, 
And throned races may degrade ; 

Yet O ye mysteries of good, 

iii 

Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, 
If all your office had to do 
With old results that look like new ; 

If this were all your mission here, 

iv 

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, 

To fool the crowd with glorious lies. 
To cleave a creed in sects and cries. 

To change the bearing of a word. 



IN MEMO R I AM ^03 

V 

To shift an arbitrary power, 

To cramp the student at his desk, 
To make old bareness picturesque 

And tuft with grass a feudal tower ; 

vi 

Why then my scorn might well descend 
On you and yours. I see in part 
That all, as in some piece of art. 

Is toil cooperant to an end. 



204 IN MEMORIAM 



CXXIX 



Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, 
So far, so near in woe and weal ; 
O loved the most, when most I feel 

There is a lower and a higher ; 

ii 
Known and unknown ; human, divine ; 

Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; 

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine ; 



Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; 

Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; 

Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
And mingle all the world with thee. 



IN MEMORIAM 205 



cxxx 



1 
Thy voice is on the rolling air ; 

I hear thee where the waters run ; 

Thou standest in the rising sun, 
And in the setting thou art fair. 

ii 

What art thou then ? I cannot guess ; 
But tho' I seem in star and flower 
To feel thee some diffusive power, 

I do not therefore love thee less : 

iii 
My love involves the love before ; 

My love is vaster passion now ; 

Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, 
I seem to love thee more and more. 

iv 
Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 

I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 

I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
I shall not lose thee tho' I die. 



2o6 IN MEMORIAM 



CXXXI 



1 
O LIVING will that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shock, 

Rise in the spiritual rock, 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

ii 

That we may lift from out of dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer'd years 

To one that with us works, and trust, 

iii 

With faith that comes of self-control, 

The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved. 

And all we flow from, soul in soul. 



IN ME MORI AM 207 



1 
O TRUE and tried, so well and long, 

Demand not thou a marriage lay ; 

In that it is thy marriage day 
Is music more than any song. 

ii 

Nor have I felt so much of bliss 

Since first he told me that he loved 
A daughter of our house ; nor proved 

Since that dark day a day like this ; 

iii 
Tho' I since then have number'd o'er 

Some thrice three years : they went and came. 
Remade the blood and changed the frame, 
And yet is love not less, but more ; 

iv 

No longer caring to embalm 

In dying songs a dead regret. 

But like a statue solid-set, 
And moulded in colossal calm. 



2o8 IN MEMORIAM 

V 

Regret is dead, but love is more 

Than in the summers that are flown, 
For I myself with these have grown 

To something greater than before ; 

vi 

Which makes appear the songs I made 
As echoes out of weaker times, 
As half but idle brawling rhymes, 

The sport of random sun and shade. 

vii 
But where is she, the bridal flower. 

That must be made a wife ere noon ? 

She enters, glowing like the moon 
Of Eden on its bridal bower : 

viii 

On me she bends her blissful eyes 

And then on thee ; they meet thy look 
And brighten like the star that shook 

Betwixt the palms of paradise. 

ix 
O when her life was yet in bud, 

He too foretold the perfect rose. 

For thee she grew, for thee she grows 
For ever, and as fair as good. 



IN MEMORIAM 209 

X 

And thou art worthy ; full of power ; 
As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, 
Consistent ; wearing all that weight 

Of learning lightly like a flower. 

xi 
But now set out : the noon is near, 

And I must give away the bride ; 

She fears not, or with thee beside 
And me behind her, will not fear. 

xii 

For I that danced her on my knee, 

That watch'd her on her nurse's arm, 
That shielded all her life from harm 

At last must part with her to thee ; 

xiii 
Now waiting to be made a wife. 

Her feet, my darling, on the dead ; 

Their pensive tablets round her head. 
And the most living words of life 

xiv 

Breathed in her ear. The ring is on, 

The ' wilt thou ' answer'd, and again 
The ' wilt thou ' ask'd, till out of twain 

Her sweet ' I will ' has made you one. 



o IN ME MORI AM 

XV 

Now sign your names, which shall be read, 
Mute symbols of a joyful morn, 
By village eyes as yet unborn ; 

The names are sign'd, and overhead 

xvi 
Begins the clash and clang that tells 

The joy to every wandering breeze ; 

The blind wall rocks, and on the trees 
The dead leaf trembles to the bells. 

xvii 

O happy hour, and happier hours 

Await them. Many a merry face 
Salutes them — maidens of the place, 

That pelt us in the porch with flowers. 

xviii 
O happy hour, behold the bride 

With him to whom her hand I gave. 

They leave the porch, they pass the grave 
That has to-day its sunny side. 

xix 

To-day the grave is bright for me. 

For them the light of life increased, 
Who stay to share the morning feast. 

Who rest to-night beside the sea. 



IN MEMORIAM 2: 

XX 

Let all my genial spirits advance 

To meet and greet a whiter sun ; 
My drooping memory will not shun 

The foaming grape of eastern France. 

xxi 

It circles round, and fancy plays, 

And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom, 
As drinking health to bride and groom 

We wish them store of happy days. 

xxii 

Nor count me all to blame if I 
Conjecture of a stiller guest. 
Perchance, perchance, among the rest, 

And, tho' in silence, wishing joy. 

xxiii 
But they must go, the time draws on. 

And those white-favour'd horses wait ; 

They rise, but linger ; it is late ; 
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. 

xxlv 

A shade falls on us like the dark 

From little cloudlets on the grass, 
But sweeps away as out we pass 

To range the woods, to roam the park, 



2 IN MEMORIAM 

XXV 

Discussing how their courtship grew, 
And talk of others that are wed, 
And how she look'd, and what he said. 

And back we come at fall of dew. 

xxvi 

Again the feast, the speech, the glee. 

The shade of passing thought, the wealth 
Of words and wit, the double health, 

The crowning cup, the three-times-three, 

xxvii 

And last the dance ; — till I retire : 

Dumb is that tower which spake so loud. 
And high in heaven the streaming cloud, 

And on the downs a rising fire : 

xxviii 

And rise, O moon, from yonder down. 
Till over down and over dale 
All night the shining vapour sail 

And pass the silent-lighted town, 

xxix 

The white-faced halls, the glancing rills, 
And catch at every mountain head. 
And o'er the friths that branch and spread 

Their sleeping silver thro' the hills ; 



IN MEMORIAM 213 

XXX 

And touch with shade the bridal doors, 

With tender gloom the roof, the wall ; 
And breaking let the splendour fall 

To spangle all the happy shores 

xxxi 

By which they rest, and ocean sounds, 
And, star and system rolling past, 
A soul shall draw from out the vast 

And strike his being into bounds, 

xxxii 

And, moved thro' life of lower phase, 
Result in man, be born and think, 
And act and love, a closer link 

Betwixt us and the crowning race 

xxxiii 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 

On knowledge ; under whose command 
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand 

Is Nature like an open book ; 

xxxiv 

No longer half-akin to brute. 

For all we thought and loved and did, 
And hoped, and sufifer'd, is but seed 

Of what in them is flower and fruit : 



214 IN MEMORIAM 

XXXV 

Whereof the man, that with me trod 
This planet, was a noble type 
Appearing ere the times were ripe, 

That friend of mine who lives in God, 

xxxvi 

That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event. 

To which the whole creation moves. 



. AUTHOR'S NOTES 

Edited bv Hallam, Lord Tennyson 

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR 

Unborn, undying Love, 
Thou foldest like a golden atmosphere 
The very Throne of the Eternal God. 

Half a mile to the south of Clevedon in Somersetshire, 
on a lonely hill, stands Clevedon Church, ' obscure and 
solitary,' overlooking a wide expanse of V4^ater, where the 
Severn flows into the Bristol Channel. It is dedicated to 
St. Andrew, the chancel being the original fishermen's 
chapel. 

From the graveyard you can hear the music of the tide 
as it washes against the low cliffs not a hundred yards 
away. In the manor aisle of the church, under which is 
the vault of the Hallams, may be read this epitaph to 
Arthur Hallam, written by his father : 

TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM 

ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM ESQUIRE 

AND OF JULIA MARIA HIS WIFE 

DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON BARONET 

OF CLEVEDON COURT 

215 



2i6 LV MEMORIAM 

WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH 

AT VIENNA ON SEPTEMBER 15TH 1 833 

IN THE TWENTY-THIRD YEAR OF HIS AGE 

AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH 

REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 

ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME 

BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS CONTEMPORARIES 

FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS 

THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING 

THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION 

THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY 

AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE 

VALE DULCISSIME 

VALE DILECTISSIME DESIDERATISSIME 

REQUIESCAS IN PACE 

PATER AC MATER II IC POSTHAC REQUIESCAMUS TECUM 

USQUE AD TUBAM 

In this part of the church there is also another tablet to 
the memory of Henry Hallam, the epitaph written by my 
father : who thought the simpler the epitaph, the better it 
would become the simple and noble man, whose work 
speaks for him : 

HERE WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN RESTS 
HENRY HALLAM THE HISTORIAN y 

It was not until May 1850 that In Memoriam was 
printed and given to a few friends. Shortly afterwards 
the poem was published, first of all anonymously, but the 
authorship was soon discovered. 

The earliest jottings, begun in 1833, of the * Elegies,' as 
they were then called, were nearly lost in a London lodging, 
for my father was always careless about his manuscripts. 

At first the review s of the volume were not on the whole 
sympathetic. One critic in a leading journal, for instance, 
considered that ' a great deal of poetic feeling had been 
wasted,' and ' much shallow art spent on the tenderness 
shown to an Amaryllis of the Chancery Bar.' Another 
referred to the poem as follows : ' These touching lines 
evidently come from the full heart of the widow of a 
military man.' However, men like Maurice and Robertson 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 217 

thought that the author had made a definite step towards 
the unification of the highest religion and philosophy with 
the progressive science of the day; and that he was the 
one poet who 'through ahnost the agonies of a death- 
struggle' had made an eftective stand against his own 
doubts and difficulties and those of the time, ' on behalf of 
those first pi inciples which underlie all creeds, which belong 
to our earliest childhood, and on which the v\isest and 
best have rested through all ages; that all is right; that 
darkness shall be clear; that God and Time are the only 
interpreters; that Love is King; that the Immortal is in 
us; that, which is the keynote of the whole, " All is w ell, 
tho' Faith and Form be sundered in the night of Fear." ' 
Scientific leaders like Herschel, Owen, Sedgwick and 
Tyndall regarded him as a champion of Science, and 
cheered him with words of genuine admiration for his love 
of Nature, for the eagerness with which he welcomed all 
the latest scienti.ic discoveries, and for his trust in truth. 
Science indeed in his opinion was one of the main forces 
tending to disperse the superstition that still darkens the 
world. A review which he thought one of the ablest was 
that by Mr. Gladstone. From this review I quote the 
following to show that i 1 Gladstone's opinion my father 
had not over-estimated Arthur Hallam: 

*In 1850 Mr. Tennyson gave to the world under the 
title of hi MemoriaDi, perhaps the richest oblation ever 
offered by the affection of friendship at the tomb of the 
departed. Thememory of Arthur Henry Hallam, who died 
suddenly in 1833, at the age of twenty-two, will doubtless 
live chiefly in connection with this volume. But he is well 
known to have been one w ho, if the term of his days had 
been prolonged, w ould have needed no aid from a friendly 
hand, would have b,uilt his own enduring morument,and 
would have bequeathed to his country a name in all likeli- 
hood greater than that of his very distinguished father. 
The writer of this paper was, more than half a century ago, 
in a condition to say 

" I marked him 

As a far Alp; and loved to watch the sunrise 

Dawn on his ample brow."i 

1 De Vere's Mary Tudor, iv. i. 



2i8 IN MEMORIAM 

* There perhaps was no one among those who were blessed 
with his friendship, nay, as we see, not even Mr. Tennyson, i 
who did not feel at once bound closely to him by com- 
manding affection, and left far behind by the rapid, full 
and rich development of his ever-searching mind; by his 

" All-comprehensive tenderness, 
All-subtilising intellect." 

* It would be easy to show what in the varied forms of 
human excellence, he might, had life been granted him, 
have accomplished ; much more difficult to point the finger 
and to say, " This he never could have done." Enough 
remains from among his early efforts, to accredit whatever 
mournful witness may now be borne of him. But what 
can be a nobler tribute than this, that for seventeen years 
after his death a poet, fast rising towards the lofty summits 
of his art, found that young fading image the richest source 
of his inspiration, and of thoughts that gave him buoyancy 
for a flight such as he had not hitherto attained.' ^ 

The late Bishop Westcott and Professor Henry Sidgwick 
wrote me interesting letters which respectively give the 
impressions the poem made on Cambridge men in 1850, 
and in i860, and I quote them in extenso. 

The Bishop writes : 

* When In Memoriain appeared, I felt (as I feel if possible 
more strongly now) that the hope of man lies in the historic 
realisation of the Gospel. I rejoiced in the Introduction, 
which appeared to me to be the mature summing up after 
an interval of the many strains of thought in the " Elegies." 
Now the stress of controversy is over, I think so still. As 
I look at my original copy of In Memoriam, I recognise 
that what impressed me most was your father's splendid 
faith (in the face of the frankest acknowledgment of every 
difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in 
the noble destiny of the individual man as he offers himself 
for the fulfilment of his httle part (Liv., lxxxi., lxxxii. 
and the closing stanzas). This faith has now largely 
entered into our common life, and it seems to me to express 

1 See hi Memoriam, cix., ex., cxi., cxn., cxin. 
2 Gladstone's Gleafiings of Past Years, vol. ii. pp. 136, 137. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 219 

a lesson of the Gospel which the circumstances of all time 
encourage us to master.' 

Professor Sidgwick writes : 

'After thinking over the matter, it has seemed to me 
better to write to you a somewhat different kind of letter 
from that which I originally designed : a letter not primarily 
intended for publication, though I wish you to feel at 
liberty to print any part of it which you may find suitable, 
but primarily intended to serve rather as a "document" on 
which you may base any statements you may wish to make 
as to the impression produced by In Menioj-iatti. I have 
decided to adopt this course : because I want to wiitc with 
rather more frank egotism than I shoul 1 otherwise like 
to show. I want to do this, because in describing the 
impression made on me by the poem, 1 ought to make 
clear the point of view from which I approached it, and the 
attitude of thought which I retained under its influence. 
In what follows I shall be describing chiefly my own 
experiences ; but I shall allow myself sometimes to say 
"we " rather than " I," meaning by '* we " my generation, 
as known to me, through converse with intimate friends. 

'To begin, then : our views on religious matters were not, 
at any rate after a year or two of the discussion started in 
i860 by Essays ami Reviews, really in harmony with those 
which we found suggested by In Alemoriam. They were 
more sceptical and less Christian, in any strict sense of the 
word: certainly this was the case with myself : I remember 
feeling that Clough repi'esented my individual habits of 
thought and sentiment more than your father, although as 
a poet he moved me less. And this more sceptical attitude 
has remained mine through life; while at ihe same time 1 
feel that the beliefs in God and in immortality are vital to 
human well-being. 

'Hence the most important influence of/;zyI/,?w^rm/;/ on 
my thought, apart from its poetic charm as an expression 
of personal emotion, opened in a region, if I mav so say, 
deeper down than the difference between Theism and 
Christianity: it lav in the unparalleled combination of 
intensity of feeling with comprehensiveness of view and 
balance of judgment, shown in presenting the deepest needs 
and perplexities of humanity. And this influence, I find, 



220 IN MEMORIAM 

has increased rather than diminished as years have gone 
on, and as the great issues between Agnostic Science and 
Faith have become continually more prominent. In the 
sixties I should say that these deeper issues were some- 
what obscured by the discussions on Christian dogma, 
and Inspiration of Scripture, etc. Yuu may remember 
Browning's reference to this period — 

" The Essays and Reviews debate 
Begins to tell on the public mind 
And Colenso's words have wt-ight." 

' During these years we were absoibed in struggling for 
freedom of thought inthe trammels (-fa historical religion : 
and perhaps what we sympathised with most in In 
Memoriatn at this time, apart fn m the personal feeling, 
was the defence of " honest doubt," the reconciliation of 
knowledge and faith in the introductory potm, and the 
hopefulJ:rumpet-ring of the lines on the ISew Year — 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace, 

and generally the /orre/rtT^/ movement of the thought. 

'Well, the years pass, the struggle with what C arlyle 
used to call "Hebrew old clothes" is over. Freedom is 
won, and what does Freedom bring us to? It brings us 
face to face with atheistic science ; thf faith in God and 
Immortality, which we had been struggling to clear fiom 
superstition, suddenly seems to be in the air : and in 
seeking for a firm l)asis for this faith we find ourselves in 
the midst of the " fight with death " which In AIe7)ioriani 
so powerfully presents. 

* What In Menioriani did for us, for me at least, in this 
struggle was to impress on us the ineffaceable and ineradic- 
able conviction thit humanity \\\S}^ not and cannot acqui- 
esce in a godless world : the "man in men " will not do 
this, whatever individual men may do, whatever they may 
temporarily feel themselves driven to do, by folk.wing 
methods which they cannot abandon to the conclusions 
to which these methods at present seem to lead. 

'The force with which it impressed this conviction was 
not due X.o\.\v& mere irttensity oi'xK.?, expression of the feelings 
which Atheism outrages and Agnosticism ignores : but 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 221 

rather to its expression of them along with a reverent 
docility to the lessons of science which also belongs to the 
essence of the tht>ught of our age. 

' I remember being struck with a note in A^ature, at 
the time of your father's death, which dwelt on this last- 
mentioned aspect of liis work, and regarded him as pre- 
eminently the Poet of Science. I have always felt this 
characteristic important in estimating his effect on his 
generation. Wordsworth's attitude towards Nature was 
one that, so to say, left Science unregarded : the Nature 
for which Wordsworth stirred our feelings was Nature as 
known by simple observation and interpreted by religious 
and sympathetic intuition. But for your father the physical 
world is always the world as known to us through physical 
science : the scientific view of it dominates his thoughts 
about it : and his general acceptance of this view is real 
and sincere, even when he utters the intensest feeling of 
its inadequacy to satisfy our deepest needs. Had it been 
otherwise, had he met the atheistic tendencies of modern 
Science with more confident defiance, more confident 
assertion of an Intuitive Faculty of theological knowledge, 
overriding the results laboriously reached by empirical 
science, 1 think his antagonism to these tendencies would 
have been far less impressive. 

* I always feel this strongly in reading the memorable 
lines : 

" If e'er, when faith had fallen asleep " down to " I have 

felt."i 

' At this point, if the stanzas had stopped here, we should 
have shaken our heads and said, " Feeling must not usurp 
the function of Reason. Feeling is not knowing. It is the 
duty cjf a rational being to follow truth wherever it leads," 

' But the poet's instinct knows this ; he knows that this 
usurpation by P^eeling of the function of Reason is too bold 
and confident; accordingly in the next stanza he gives the 
turn to humility in the protest of Feeling which is required 
(I think) to win the assent of the " man in men " at this 
stage of human thought. 

' These lines I can never read without tears. I feel in 
them the indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith 
which humanity cannot give up because it is necessary for 
1 See cxxiv, iii. iv. and v. 



222 IN MEMORIAM 

life ; and which I know that I, at least so far as the man in 
me is deeper than the methodical thinker, cannot give up. 
' If the possibility of a "godless world " is excluded, the 
faith thus restored is, for the poet, unquestionably a form 
of Christian faith : there seems to him tlien no reason for 
doubting that the 

Sinless years 
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue, 

and the marvel of the life continued after the bodily death, 
were a manifestation of the "immortal love" which by faith 
we embrace as the essence of the Divine nature. " If the 
dead rise not, Christ is not risen " : but it we may believe 
that they rise, then it seems to him, we may and must 
believe the main drift of the Gospel story ; though we may 
transiently wonder why the risen Lord told His disciples 
only of life, and nothing of " what it is to die." ^ 

' From this point of view the note of Christian faith struck 
in the introductory stanzas is in harmony with all that 
follows. And yet 1 have always felt that in a certain sense 
the effect of the introduction does not quite represent the 
effect of the poem. Faith, in the introduction, is too 
completely triumphant. I think this is inevitable, because 
so far as the thought-debate presented by the poem is 
summed up, it must be summed up on the side of Faith. 
Faith must give the last word : but the last word is not the 
w hole utterance of the truth : the whole truth is that assur- 
ance and doubt must alternate in the moral world in which 
we at present live, somewhat as night and day alternate in 
the physical world. The revealing visions come and go; 
when they come we y^^-/ that we kno^v : but in the intervals 
we must pass through states in which all is dark, and in 
which we can only struggle to hold the conviction that 

Power is with us in the night 
Which makes the darkness and the light 
And dwells not in the light alone.' 



' It must be remembered,' writes my father, ' that this is 
a poem, not an actual biography. It is founded on our 
fiiendship, on the engagement of Arthur Hallam to my 

1 See Browning's ' Epistle containing the Strange Medical 
Experience of Karshish.' 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 223 

sister, on his sudden death at Vienna, just before the time 
fixed for their marriage, and on his burial at Clevedon 
L-hurch. '1 he pnem concludes with the marriage of my 
youngest sister Cecilia. It was meant to be a kind of 
Divina Commedia, ending with happiness. The sections 
were written at many different places, and as the phases of 
our intercourse came to my memory and suggested them. 
I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a 
whole, or for publication, until I fuund that 1 had written 
so many. The different moods of sorrow as in a drama 
are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts, 
and suffering will rind answer and relief only through Faith 
in a God of Love. " I " is not always the author speaking 
of himself, but the voice of the huii an race speaking thro' 
him. After the dtath of A. H. H., the divisions of the 
poem are made by First Xmas Eve (Section xxviii.), Second 
Xmas (LXXViii.i), Third Xmas F^ve (civ. and cv. etc.). I 
myself did not see Clevedon till years after the burial of 
A. H. H. (Jan. 3r(l, 1834), and then in later editions of /// 
Memoriam I altered the word " chancel," which was the 
word used by Mr. Hallam in his Memoir, to "dark church." 
As to the localities in which the poems were written, some 
were written in 1 incolnshire, some in London, Essex, 
Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere where I happened to be.' 
' And as for the metre of In Memoriam 1 had no notion 
till 1880 that Lord Herbert of Cherbury had written his 
occasional verses in the same metre. I believed myself the 
originator of the metre, until &{\.gx Jii Memoriam came out, 
when some one told me that Ben Jonson and Sir Philip 
Sidney had used it. The following poems were omitted 
from Itt Memoriam when I published, because I thought 
them redundant.' "^ 

THE GRAVE (originally No. lvii.) 
( Unpublished.) 

I keep no more a lone distress. 

The crowd have come to see thy grave, 
Small thanks or credit shall I have, 

But these shall see it none the less. 

^ No. Lxxii. refers to the first anniversary of the death, Sept. 15th, 
1833. No. en. to the farewell of the family to Somersby in 1837. 
2 * O sorrow, wilt thou live with me ' was added in 1851. 



224 • • IN^ MEMORIAM 

The happy maiden's tears are free 

And she will weep and give them way; 
Yet one unschool'd in want will say 

*The dead are dead and let them be.' 

Another whispers sick with loss; 

' O let the simple slab remain ! 

The " Mercy Jesu " ^ in the rain ! 
The " Miserere " ^ in the moss ! 

* I love the daisy weeping dew, 

I hate the trim-set plots of art ! ' 

My friend, thou speakest from the heart, 

But look, for these are nature too. 



TO A. H. H. (originally No. cviii.) 
( Unpublished.^ 

Young is the grief T entertain. 

And ever new the tale she tells, 
And ever young the face that dwells 

With reason cloister'd in the brain: 

Yet grief deserves a nobler name, 

She spurs an imitative will; 

'Tis shame to fail so far, and still 
My failing shall be less my shame. 

Considering what mine eyes have seen, 

And all the sweetness which thou wast, 
And thy beginnings in the past, 

And all the strength thou would'st have been; 

A master mind with master minds, 
An orb repulsive of all hate, 
A will concentric with all fate, 

A life four-square to all the winds. 

^ As seen by ne in Tintern Abbey. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 225 

THE VICTOR HOURS (originally No. cxxvii.) 

( Unp II blisJi ed. ) 

Are those the far-famed Victor Hours 

That ride to death the griefs of men ? 
I fear not, if I fear'd them then; — 

Is this blind flight the winged Powers? 

Behold, ye cannot bring but good, 

And see, ye dare not touch the truth, 
Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth. 

Nor Love that holds a constant mood. 

Ye must be wiser than your looks. 

Or wise yourselves or wisdom-led, 
Else this wide whisper round my head 

Were idler than a flight of rooks. 

Go forward ! crumble down a throne. 
Dissolve a world, condense a star, 
Unsocket all the joints of war, 

And fuse the peoples into one. 

That my father was a student of the Bible, those who 
have read In A/e>noriam know. He also eagerly read all 
notable works within his reach relating to the Bible, and 
traced with deep interest such fundamental truths as un- 
derlie the great religions of the world. He hoped that the 
Bible would be more and more studied by all ranks of 
people, and expounded simplv by their teachers ; for he 
maintained that the religion of a people could never be 
founded on mere moral philosophy : and that it could 
only come home to them in the simple, noble thoughts 
and facts of a Scripture like ours. 

Soon after his marriage he took to reading different 
systems of philosophy, yet none particularly influenced 
him. The result I think is shown in a more ordered ar- 
rangement of religious, metaphysical and scientific thought 
throughout the Idylls and his later works. * In Poems like 
"De Profundis" and the "Ancient Sage,'" Jowett said, 

Q 



226 IN ME MORI AM 

* he often brings up metaphysical truths from the deepest 
depths.' But as a rule he knew that poetry must touch 
on metaphysical topics rather by allusicn than systematic- 
ally. In the following pages I shall not give any of his 
subtler arguments; but only attempt to illustrate from In 
Metnoriain, with some of the other p^ems, and from his 
conversation, the general everyday attitude of his mind 
toward the highest problems that confront us. In dealing 
with these none was readier in the discovery of fallacies, 
none was more resolute in proclaiming what seemed to 
him realities. 

His creed, he always said, he would not formulate, for 
people would not understand him if he did ; but he con- 
sidered that his poems expressed the principles at the 
foundation of his faith. 

He thought, with Arthur Hallam, that ' the essential 
feelings of religion subsist in the utmost diversity of forms,' 
that ' different language does not always imply different 
opinions, nor different opinions any difference in real 
faith.' 'It is impossible,' he said, ' to imagine that the 
Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the 
next life, what your particular form of creed was : but the 
question will rather be, " Have you been true to yourself, 
and given in My Name a cup of cold water to one of these 
little ones ? " ' 

'This is a terrible age cf unfaith,' he would say. 'I 
hate utter unfaith, I cannot endure that men should sacri- 
fice everything at the cold altar of what with their imper- 
fect knowledge they choose to call truth and reason. One 
can easily lose all belief, through giving up the continual 
thought and care for spiritual things.' 

Again, ' I tell you the nation without faith is doomed; 
mere intellectual life — however advanced or however per- 
fected — will not fill the void.' 

And again, ' In this vale of Time the hills of Time often 
shut out the mountains of Eternity.' 

My father's friend, the Bishop of Ripon, writes : 

' With those who are impatient of all spiritual truth he 
had no sympathy whatever ; but he had a sympathy with 
those who were impatient of the formal statement of truth, 
only because he felt that all formal statements of truth 
must of necessity fall below the greatness and the grandeur 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 227 

of the truth itself. There is a reverent impatience of forms, 
and there is an irreverent impatience of them. An irrever- 
ent impatience of formal dogma means impatience of all 
spiritual truth ; but a reverent impatience of formal 
dogma may be but the expression of the feeling that the 
truth must be larger, purer, nobler than any mere human 
expression or definition of it. With this latter attitude of 
mind he had sympathy, and he expressed that sympathy 
in song : he could understand those who seemed 

To have reach'd a purer air. 
Whose faith has centre everywhere, 
Nor cares to fix itself to form. 

* He urged men to '* cling to faith, beyond the forms of 
faith." 1 But while he did this he also recognized clearly 
the importance and the value of definitions of truth, and 
his counsel to the very man who prided himself upon his 
emancipation from forms was : 

Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 

Her early Heaven, her happy views; 
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse 

A life that leads melodious days. 

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, 
Her hands are quicker unto good : 
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 

To which she links a truth divine ! '^ 

1 Cf. Memoir, vol ii. ch. xxiii. In his view of the gospel of 
Christ he found his Christianity undisturbed by jarring of sects and 
of creeds; but he said, * I dread the losing hold of forms. I have 
expressed this in my " Akbar." There must be forms, but I hate the 
need for so many sects and separate shrines.' ' The life after death, 
Lightfoot and I agreed, is the cardinal point of Christianity. I be- 
lieve that God reveals Himself in every individual soul, and my 
idea of heaven is the perpetual ministry of one soul to another.' 

2Jowett wrote about my father's 'defence of honest doubt' as 
compared with this passage : ' Can we find any reconciliation of 
these varying utterances of the same mind ? I think that we may. 
For we may argue that truth kept back is the greatest source of 
doubt and suspicion: that faith cannot survive without enquiry, 
and that the doubt which is raised may be the step upward to a 
higher faith. And so we arrive at the conclusion that truth is good, 
and to be received thankfully and fearlessly by all who are capable 
of receiving it. But on the other hand it is not always to be 
imparted in its entirety to those who cannot understand it, and 
whose minds would be puzzled and overwhelmed by it.' 



228 IN MEMORIAM 

* He warned the man proud of his emancipation from 
formal faith, that in a world of so many confusions he 
might meet with ruin, " Ev'n for want of such a type." 
And we are not surprised, knowing how insidious are the 
evil influences which gather round us : 

Hold thou the good ; define it well, 
For fear Divine Philosophy 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 

Procuress to the lords of Hell. 

* And thus he had sympathy with those who feel that 
faith is larger and nobler than form, and at the same time 
he had tenderness and appreciation for those who find 
tiieir faith helped by form. To him, as to so many, truth 
is so infinitely great that all we can do with our poor 
human utterances is to try and clothe it in such language 
as will make it clear to ourselves, and clear to those to 
whom God sends us with a message, but meanwhile, above 
us and our thoughts — above our broken lights — God in 
His mercy, God in His love, God in His infinite nature is 
greater than all.' 

Assuredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for him. 
He consistently emphasized his own belief in what he 
called the Eternal Truths ; in an Omnipotent, Omnipresent 
and All-loving God, Who has revealed Himself through 
the human attribute of the highest self-sacrificing love ; in 
the freedom of the human will ; and in the immortality of 
the soul. But he asserted that ' Nothing worthy proving 
can be proven,' and that even as to the great laws which 
are the basis of Science, ' We have but faith, we cannot 
know.' He dreaded the dogmatism of sects and rash 
definitions of God. ' I dare hardly name His Name,' he 
would say, and accordingly he named Him in ' The Ancient 
Sage ' the ' Nameless.' ' But take away belief in the self- 
conscious personality of God,' he said, ' and you take away 
the backbone of the world.' ' On God and God-like men 
we build our trust.' A week before his death I was sitting 
by him, and he talked long of the Personality and of the 
Love of God, ' That God, Whose eyes consider the poor,' 

* Who catereth even for the sparrow.' ' I should,' he said, 

* infinitely rather feel myself the most miserable wretch on 
the face of the earth with a God above, than the highest 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 220 

type of man standing alone.' He would allow that God 
is unknowable in ' his whole world -self, and all-in-all,' and 
that therefore there was some force in the objection made 
by some people to the word' Personality,' as l)eing' anthro- 
pomorphic,' and that perhaps 'Self-consciousness' or 
' Mind ' might be clearer to them : but at the same time he 
insisted that, although ' man is like a thing of nought ' in 
'the boundless plan,' our highest view of God must be more 
or less anthropomorphic : and that ' Personality,' as far as 
our intelligence goes, is the widest definition and includes 
' Mind,' ' Self-consciousness,' ' Will,' ' Love,' and other 
attributes of the Real, the Supreme, 'the High and Lofty 
One that inhabiteth Eternity Whose name is Holy.' 

Jowett asked him to write an anthem about God for 
Balliol Chapel, and he wrote 'The Human Cry ' : 

We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee; 
We feel we are something — //?(7/also has come from Thee; 
We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to be. 
Hallowed be Thy name — Hallelujah ! 

When his last book was in proof, we spoke together of 
the ultimate expression of his own calm faith at the end 
of his life : 

That Love which is and was 
My Father and my Brother and my God. 

Everywhere throughout the Universe he saw the glory 
and greatness of God, and the science of Nature was par- 
ticularly dear to him. Every new fact which came within 
his range was carefully weighed. As he exulted in the 
wilder aspects of Nature (see for instance Sect, xv.) and 
revelled in the thunderstorm ; so he felt a joy in her order- 
liness ; he felt a rest in her steadfastness, patient progress 
and hopefulness; the same seasons ever returned; the same 
stars wheeled in their courses; the flowers and trees blos- 
somed and the birds sang yearly in their appointed months; 
and he had a triumphant appreciation of her ever-new 
revelations of beauty. One of the hi Memoriayii poems, 
LXXXVi., written at Barmouth, gives pre-eminently his 
sense of the joyous peace in Nature,^ and he would quote 
it in this context along with his Spring and Bird songs. 

1 See also Sections lxxxviii., lxxxix., xci , cxv., cxvi., cxxi., 
cxxii. 



230 IN MEMORIAM 

But he was occasionally much troubled with the intel- 
lectual problem of the apparent profusion and waste of life, 
and by the vast amount of sin and suffering throughout the 
world, for these seemed to militate against the idea of the 
Omnipotent and All-loving Father. 

No doubt in such moments he might possibly have been 
heard to say what I myself have heard him say : 'An Omni- 
potent Creator Who could make such a painful world is to 
me sometimes as hard to believe in as to believe in blind 
matter behind everything. The lavish profusion too in the 
natural world appals me, from the growths of the tropical 
forest to the capacity of man to multiply, the torrent of 
babies.' 

' I can almost understand some of the Gnostic heresies, 
which only after all put the difficulty one step further back' : 

O me ! for why is all around us here 
As if some lesser god had made the world. 
But had not force to shape it as he would. 
Till the High God behold it from beyond 
And enter it, and make it beautiful? ^ 

After one of these moods in the summer of 1892 he 
exclaimed : ' Yet God is love, transcendent, all-pervading ! 
We do not get this faith from Nature or the world. If we 
look at Nature alone, full of perfection and imperfection, 
she tells us that God is disease, murder and rapine. We 
get this faith from ourselves, from what is highest within 
us, which recognizes that there is not one fruitless pang, 
just as there is not one lost good.' 

He had been reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle 
to the Romans, and said that he thought that St. Paul fully 
recognized in the sorrows of Nature and in the miseries of 
the world a stumbling-block to the divine idea of God, but 
that they are the preludes necessary, as things are, to the 
higher good. ' For myself,' he said, * the world is the 
shadow of God.' 

My father invariably believed that humility ^ is the only 

1 He would sometimes put forward the old theory that * The 
world is part of an infinite plan, incomplete because it is a part 
We cannot therefore read the riddle.' 

2 ' Almost the finest summing up of Religion is " to do justice, to 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." ' — A. T. 

He often quoted Newton's saying that we are like children picking 
up pebbles on the shore of the Infinite Ocean. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 231 

true attitude of the human soul, and therefore spoke with 
the greatest reserve of what he called 'these unfathomable 
mysteries,' as befitting one who did not dogmatise, but 
who knew that tlie Finite can l)y no means grasp the 
Iniinite : ' Dark is the world to thee,^ thyself is the reason 
why'; and yet, he had a profound trust that when all is 
seen face to face, all will be seen as the best. ' P^ear not 
thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is 
,great.' 'Who knows whether Revelation be not itself a 
veil to hide the Glory of that Love which we could not 
look upon, without marring the sight and our onward 
progress?' 

This faith was to him the breath of life, and never, I 
feel, really failed him, or life itself would have failed. 

Free-will and its relation to the meaning of human life 
and to circumstance was latterly one of his most common 
subjects of conversation. Free-will was undoubtedly, he 
said, the ' main miracle, apparently an act of self limitation 
by the Infinite, and yet a revelationby Himself of Himself.' 
' Take away the sense of individual responsibility and men 
sink into pessimism and madness.' He wrote at the end 
of the poem ' Despair ' : 'In my boyhood I came across 
the Calvinist Creed, and assuredly however unfathomable 
the mystery, if one cannot believe in the freedom of the 
human will as of the Divine, life is hardly worth having.' 
The lines that he oftenest repeated about Free-will were : 

* This main miracle that thou art thou 
With power on thine own act and on the world.' ^ 

Then he would enlarge upon man's consequent moral 
obligations, upon the Law which claims a free obedience, 
and upon the pursuit of moral perfection (in imitation of 
thi Divine) to which man is called. 'Be ye perfect as 
your Father in heaven is perfect.' 

And he wrote for me as to man's will being free but 
only within certain limits : ' Man's Free-will is but a bird in 
a cage; he can stop at the lower perch, or he can mount 
to a higher. Then that which is and knows will enlarge 
his cage, give him a higher and a higher perch, and at last 

' The real mysteries to him were Time, life, and ' finite-infinite ' 
space : and so he talks of the soul ' being born and banish'd into 
mystery.' ^" ? ' Pe Profundis.' 



232 IN MEM OR I AM 

break off the top of his cage, and let him out to be one 
with the Free-will of the Universe.' Then he said earnestly : 
' If the absorption into the divine in the after-life be the 
creed of some, let them at all events allow us many exist- 
ences of individuality before this absorption; since this 
short-lived individuality seems to be but too short a 
preparation for so mighty a union." ^ 

Death's truer name 
Is ' Onward,' no discordance in the roll 
And march of that Eternal Harmony 
"Whereto the worlds beat time. 

In the same way, ' O living will that shalt endure '^ he 
explained as that M'hich we know as Free-wi'l, the higher 
and enduring part of man. He held that there was an 
intimate connexion between the human and the divine, 
and that each individual will had a spiritual and eternal 
significance with relation to other individual wills as well 
as to the Supreme and Eternal Will. 

Throughout his life he had a constant feeling of a 
spiritual harmonv existing between ourselves and the 
outward visible Universe, and of the actual Immanence 
of ("lod in the infinitesimal atom as in the vastest system.^ 
* If God,' he would sav, ' wf re to withdraw Himself for 
one single instant from this Universe, everything would 
vanish into nothingness.' When speaking on that subject 
he said to me: ' My most passionate desire is to have a 
clearer and fuller vision of God. The soul seems to me 
one with God, how I cannot tell. I can sympathize with 
God in my poor little way.' In some phases of thought 
and feeling his idealism tended more decidedly to mysti- 
cism. He wrote: 'A kind of waking trance I have 
frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been 
all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' 
repeating my own name two or three times to myself 

1 Cf Tn Memoriam, XLvn. 

^ l7i Memorzam, cxx-Ki. 

3 He would point out the difficul'ies of materialism, and would 
propound to us, when we were boys, the old puzzle: ' Look at the 
mystery of a grain of sand; you can divide it for ever and for ever. 
You cannot conceive anything material of which you cannot conceive 
the half He disliked the Atomic theory: and was taken by the 
theory oi aboriginal centres of force. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 233 

silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of 
the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself 
seemed to dissolve and fade avi^ay into boundless being, 
and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the 
clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the 
weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost 
laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it 
were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.' ^ 'Tliis 
might,' he said, 'be the state which St. I^aul describes, 
" Whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out uf the 
body I cannot tell." ' 

He continued : ' I am ashamed of my feeble description. 
Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words ? But in 
a moment, when I come back to my normal state of 
" sanity, " I am ready to fight for viein liebes Jch, and 
hold that it will last for aeons of aeons.' 

In the same way he said that there might be a more 
intimate communion than we could dream of between the 
living and the dead, at all events for a time. 

May all I )ve, 
His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee, 
Till God's love set Thee at his side again ! 
And — 

The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, 
But cannot wholly free itself from Man, 
Are calling to each other thro' a dawn 
Stranger than earth has ever seen ; the veil 
Is rending, and the Voices of the day 
Are heard across the Voices of the dark. 

I need not enlarge upon his faith in the Immortality of 
the Soul, as he has dwelt upon that so fully in his poems. 
' I can hardly understand,' he said, ' how any great, 
imaginative man, who has deeply lived, suffered, thought 
and wrought, can doubt of the Soul's continuous progress 
in the after-life.' His poem of ' Wages ' he liked to quote 
on this subject. 

He more than once said what he has expressed in 
' Vastness ' : ' Hast Thou made all this for naught ! Is 

^ Cf. ' The Ancient Sage," and the smaller partial anticipation in 
In Memoriaiu, xcv. ix. 



234 IN MEMOKIAM 

all this trouble of life worth undergoing if we only end in 
our own corpse-coffins at last ? If you allow a God, and 
God allows this strong instinct and universal yearning for 
another life, surely that is in a measure a presumption of 
its truth. We cannot give up the mighty hopes that make 
us men.' 

My own dim life should teach me this, 
That life shall live for evermore. 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 
And dust and ashes all that is. 
What then were God to such as I ? 

I have heard him even say that he ' would rather know 
that he was to be lost eternally than not know that the 
wh. le human race was to live eternally.' 

One day towards the end of his life he bade me look into 
the Revised Version and see how the Revisers had trans- 
lated the passage, ' Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
everlasting tire.' His disappointment was keen when he 
found that the translators had not altered 'everlasting' 
into ' aeonian ' or some such word : for he never would 
believe that Christ could preach ' everlasting punishment.' 

* Fecemi la divina potestate 
La somma sapienza, e '1 primo amore,' 

were words which he was fond of quoting in this relation, 
as if they were a kind of unconscious confession by Dante 
that Love must conquer at the last. 

Letters were nt t unfrequently addressed to him asking 
what his opinions were about Evolution, about Prayer, and 
about Christ. 

Of Evolution he said : ' That makes no difference to me, 
even if the Darwinians did not, as they do, exaggerate 
Darwinism. To God all is present. He sees present, 
past, and future as one.' 

In the poem, 'By an Evolutionist,' written in i888 
when he was dangerously ill, he defined his position; he 
conceived that the further science progressed, the more the 
Unity of Nature, and the purpose hidden behind the 
cosmic process of matter in motion and changing forms of 
life, would be apparent. Some one asked him whether it 
was not hard to account for genius by Evolution. He put 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 235 

aside the question, for he believed that genius was the 
greatest mystery to itself. 

To Tyndall he once said, ' No evolutionist is able to 
explain the mind of Man or how any possible physiological 
change of tissue can produce conscious thought.' Yet he 
was inclined to think that the theory of Evolution caused 
the world to regard more clearly the ' Life of Nature as a 
lower stage in the manifestation of a principle which is mt)re 
fully manifested in the spiritual life of man, with the idea 
that in this process of Evolution the lower is to be regarded 
as a means to the higher.' 

In Maud he spoke of the making of man : 

As nine months gp to the shaping an infant ripe for his 

birth, 
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of 

man : 
He now is tirst, but is he the last? 

The answer he would give to this query was : * No, 
mankind is as yet on one of the lowest rungs of the ladder,! 
although every man has and has had from everlasting his 
true and perfect being in the Divine Consciousness.' 

About prayer he said : ' The reason why men find it 
hard to regard prayer in the same light in which it was 
formerly regarded is, that ive seem to know more of the 
unchangeableness of Law : but I believe that God reveals 
Himself in each individual soul. Prayer is, to take a 
mundane simile, like opening a sluice between the great 
ocean and our little channels when the great sea gathers 
itself together and flows in at full tide.' 

* Prayer on our part is the highest aspiration of the soul. ' 

A breath that fleets beyond this iron world 
And touches Him who made it. 

And 

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit 

can meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and 

feet. 

^ ' The herald of a higher race.' 



236 IN MEMORIAM 

And 

More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. 

He said that ' O Thou Infinite, Amen,' was the form of 
prayer which he himself used in the time of trouble and 
sorrow : and that it was better to suffer than to lose the 
power of suffering. 

When questions were written to him about Christ, he 
would say to me : ' Answer for me that I have given my 
beli f in In ll/enioriam.^ ^ 

As the Master of Balliol wrote : 

* The In Memoriam records most of his inner nature. It 
was the higher and prevailing temper of his mind. He 
used to regard it as having said what he had to say on 
religion.' 

The main testimony to Christianity he found not in 
miracles but in that eternal witness, the revelation of what 
might be called ' The Mind of God,' in the Christian 
morality, and its correlation with the divine in man. 

He had a measureless admiration for the Sermon on the 
Mount ; and for the Parables — ' perfection, beyond com- 
pare,' he called them. I heard a talk on these between 
him and Browning, and Brinvning fully agreed with my 
father in his admiration. Moreover my father expressed his 
conviction that ' Christianity with its divine Morality but 
without the central figure of Christ, the Son of Man, would 
become cold, and that it is fatal for religion to lose its 
warmth;' that '7//^ Son of Man' was the most tremendous 
title possible ; that the forms of Christian religion would 
alter ; but that the spirit of Christ would still grow from 
more to more ' in the roll of the ages.' 

Till each man find his own in all men's good, 
And all men work in noble brotherhood. 

'This is one of my meanings,' he said, * of 

Ring in the Christ that is to be — (cvi.) : 

when Christianity without bigotry will triumph, when the 
controversies of creeds shall have vanished, and 

1 In Memoriavt, xxxvi. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 237 

Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more, 
But find their limits by that larger light, 
And overstep them, moving easily 
Thro' after-ages in the Love of Truth, 
The truth of Love.' ^ 

' The most pathetic utterance in all history,' he said, * is 
that of Christ on the Cross, " It is finished," after that 
passionate cry, " My God, My God, why hast Thou for- 
saken Me ? " ' Nevertheless he also recognized the note of 
triumph in ' It is finish'd.' ' I am always amazed when I 
read the New Testament at the splendour of Christ's purity 
and holiness and at His infinite pity.'^ He disliked dis- 
cussion on the Nature of Christ, ' seeing that such discussion 
was mostly unprofitable, for none knoweth the Son but the 
Father.' ' He went about doing good,' he would say : and 
one of the traditional and unwritten sayings of Christ which 
ofttnest came home to him was, * He that is near Me is 
near the fire,' the baptism of the fire of inspiration. For 
in In Memoriatn the soul, after grappling with anguish 
and darkness, doubt and death, emerges with the inspira- 
tion of a strong and steadfast faith in the Love of God 
for man, and in the oneness of man with God, and of 
man with man in Him — 

That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves. 

1 'Akbar's Dream.' 

2 What he called the * man-woman ' in Christ, the union of tender- 
ness and strength. 



238 IN MEMORIAM 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO NOTES 
ON THE COLLECTED POEMS 

I AM told that my young countrymen would like 
notes to my poems. Shall I write what diction- 
aries tell to save some of the idle folk trouble? or 
am I to try to fit a moral to each poem ? or to add 
an analysis of passages? or to give a history of 
my similes ? I do not like the task. 



'Artist first, then Poet,' some critic said of me. 
I should answer, ' Poeta nascitur, non fit.'' I 
suppose I was nearer thirty than twenty before I 
was anything of an artist ; and in my earliest 
teens I wrote an epic — between 5000 and 6000 
verses, chiefly a la Scott, and full of battles, dealing 
too with sea and savage mountain scenery. I 
used to compose sixty or seventy lines all at once, 
and shout them about the fields as I leapt over 
the hedges. I never felt so inspired, though of 
course the poem was not worth preserving, and 
into the fire it went. 



My paraphrases of certain Latin and Greek 
lines seem too obvious to be mentioned. Many 
of the parallelisms here given are accidental. The 
same idea must often occur independently to two 
men looking on the same aspects of Nature. — T. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 239 

[The following notes M^ere left by my father partly in 
his own handwriting, and partly dictated to me. He 
went through the proofs and corrected them, and sanc- 
tioned their pubUcation under my editorship. But he 
wished it to be clearly understood that in his opinion, to 
use his own words, ' Poetry is like shot-silk with many 
glancing colours,' and that * every reader must find his 
own interpretation accinxling to his ability, and according 
to his sympathy with the poet.' 

In answer to numerous questions put to me by friends, 
I have added here and there an additional note in 
brackets, — Ed.] 



NOTES ON IN MEMORIAM 



[My father wrote in 1839: 'We must bear or we must 
die. It is easier perhaps to die, but infinitely less 
noble. 'I he immortality of man disdains and rejects 
the thought — the immortality of man to which the 
cycles and aeons are as hours and days.' — Ed. J 

P. Sec. Vkr. 

1. Introd. i. \_immortal Love. 

'Love' is used in the same sense as in St. 
John, I John chap. iv. — Ed.] 

ii. Thine are these orbs of light and shade. 
Sun and moon. 

2. vi. For knowledge is of things we see. 

Tci (f)ai.v6jxeva. 

vii. May make one mtisic as before — 
as in the ages of faith. 

4. I. i. 11. 3 and 4. I alluded to Goethe's creed. 
Among his last words were these : ' Von 
Aenderungen zu hoheren Aenderungen,' 
' from changes to higher changes.' 



240 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

4. I. i. Divers tones. 

[My father would often say, * Goethe is con- 
summate in so a, any different styles.' — 
Ed.] 

ii. 1 he far-off interest of tears. 

1 he good that grows for us out of grief. 

iii., iv. [Yet it is better to bear the wild misery of 
extreme grief than that Time should ob- 
literate the sense of loss and deaden the 
power of Love. — Ed.] 

5. II. i. Thy fibres net the dreatnless head 

NeKL'Wj' d/xevrjva Kdprjva. Od. x. 521, etc. 

iii. Cf. XXXIX. 

[ To touch thy thousand years of gloom. 
No autumn tints ever change the green 
gloom of the )ew. — Ei).] 

6. III. First realization of blind sorrow. 

ii. \_A web is wov'n across the sky ; cf. CXXII. i. 

— Eu.] 
From out ivaste places comes a cry. 
And murmurs from the dying sun. 
Expresses the feeling that sad things in 

Nature affect him who mourns. 

7. IV. iii. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears. 

That grief hath shaken into frost. 

Water can be brought below freezing point 
and not turn into ice — if it he kept still; 
but if it be moved suddenly it turns into 
ice and may break the vase. 

9. VI. i,, ii. One writes, that ^ Other friends remain^ 
That ' Loss is common to the race ' — 
Afid comtnon is the commonplace. 

And vacant chaff well Dieant for grain. 

That loss is common ivotdd not make 
My own less bitter, rather more : 
Too common ! Never mortiing wore 

To evening, but some heart did break. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 241 

P. Sec. Ver. 

Cf. Lucretius : — 

Nee nox ulla diem neque noctem Aurora 

secuta est, 
Quae nun audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris 
Ploratus. 

My friend W. G. "Ward, the well-known 
metaphysician, used to carry these two 
verses in his pocket — for he said that he 
felt so keenly that the vast sorrow in the 
world made no difterence to his own per- 
sonal deep sorrows — but through the 
feeling of his own sorrow he felt the 
universal sorrow more terribly than could 
be conceived. [Cf. Mem. i. 202; ib. 436. 
— Ed.] 

12. VII. i. Dark house, by zuhich once more I stand 
Here in the long iculovely street. 

67 Wimpole Street [the house of the his- 
torian Henry Hallam. A. H. H. used 
to say, '\\iu will always find us at sixes 
and sevens.' Cf. cxix. — Ed.]. 

15. IX. iii. Phosphor. Star of dawn. 

iv. \_sphere. Addressed to the starry heavens. 
Cf. ' Enoch Arden ' : — 
'Then the great stars that globed them- 
selves in heaven.' — Ed.] 

V. [See below, Lxxix. — Ed.] 

17. X. iii. \^home-bred fancies xt^exs \.o Vne \\r\e% \.\\2X 

follow — the wish to rest in the church- 
yard or in the chancel. — Ed.] 

18. V. tangle ox^ 02iX-w&e.d' {lamifiaj'iadigitata'). 

19. XI. ii. Calm and deep peace on this high wold. 

A Lincolnshire wold or upland from which 
the whole range of marsh to the sea is 
visible. 

R 



242 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 
21. XII. ii. I leave this mortal ark behind. 

My spirit tiies from out my material self. 

23. XIII. iv. [Time will teach him the full reality of his 
loss, whereas now he scarce believes in it, 
and is like one who between sleep and 
waking can weep and has dream-fancies. 
— Ed.] 

\_Mine eyes have leisure for their tears. 

Contrast the tearless grief in iv. iii. and XX. 

— Ed.] 

25. XIV. [The unreality of Death.i] 

iii. [ The man I held as half-divine. 

My father said, ' He was as near perfection 
as mortal man could be.' — Ed.] 

27. XV. i. And roar from yonder dropping day. 
From the West. 

iii. Athwart a plane of molten glass. 
A calm sea. 

2,Z. XVIII. i. Where he in English earth is laid. 
Clevedon. 
The violet of his native land. 
Cf. * Lay her in the earth. 
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring.' — Hamlet, v. i. 261. 

35. XIX. [Written at Tintern Abbey. — Ed.] 
i. The Daimbe to the Severn gave. 

He died at Vienna and was brought to 
Clevedon to be buried. 

ii. There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
The salt sea-zuater passes by, 
And htishes half the babbling Wye, 
And makes a silence in the bills. 
Taken from my own observation — the rapids 
of the Wye are stilled by the incoming sea. 

1 Note by my mother. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 243 

P. Sec. Ver. 
40. XXII. i. \ four sweet years. 1828-32. — Ed.] 

XXIII. ii. Who keeps the keys of all the creeds. 

After death we shall learn the truth of all 
beliefs. 

43. V. And all the secret of the Spring. 

Re-awakening of life. 

44. XXIV. i. Wandering isles of night. 

Sun-spots. 
iv. \_And orb into the perfect star, etc. 

Cf. ' Locksley Hall Sixty Years after ' : — 
* Hesper — Venus — were we native to 
that splendour or in Mars, 
We should see the Globe we groan in, fair- 
est of their evening stars.' — Ed.] 

45. XXV. \. this was Life — chequered, but the burden 

was shared. 

46. XXVI. ii. And if that eve which zvatches guilt, eic. 

The Eternal Now. I AM. 

iv. {^Then might T find, ere yet the morn 
Breaks hither over Indian seas. 
Cf. Midsummer Alight 's Dreajn, ii. ii. lO, 
and Comus, 140 : — 
* Ere the blabbing eastern scent, 
The nice morn on the Indian steep, 
From her cabin'd loophole peep.' — Ed.] 

iv. my proper scorn. Scorn of myself. 

47. XXVii. iii. \zv ant-begotten rest — 

means rest — the result of some deficiency 
or narrowness. — Ed.] 

49. XXVIII. v. The vterry merry bells of Yule. 

They always used to ring on Xmas Eve. 

50. XXIX. i. [Original reading of first verse (MS.) : — 

With such compelling cause to grieve 

As that which drains 07ir days of peace. 
And fetters thought to his decease. 

How dare we keep our Christmas-eve. — Ed. 



244 ^^ MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

Original reading of third verse (MS.) : — 
But this — to keep it like the last, 

To keep it even for his sake ; 

Lest one inor-e luik should seem to break, 
And Death sweep all into the Past. — Ed.] 

51. XXX. ii. the hall v^'z.% \\\^ dining-room at Somersby 

which my father [the Rev. G. C. Tenny- 
son] built. 

52. vii. Rapt from the fickle and the frail. 

[Cf. ' The Ring ' : — 
* No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for 
man, 
But thro' the Will of One who knows 

and rules — 
And utter knowledge is but utter love — 
yEonian Evolution, swift or slow, 
Thro' all the Spheres — an ever open- 
ing height, 
An ever lessening earth.' 
Cf. Memoir, ii. 365. — Ed.] 
Rapt. Taken. 

viii. when Hope was horn. 

[My father often said : ' The cardinal point 
of C hristianity is the hfe after death.' 
— Ed.] 

53. XXXI. 'She goeth out unto the grave to weep there,' 

St. John xi. 31. 
iv. [He is Lazarus. — Ed.] 

55. XXXIII. ii. A life that leads melodious days 
Cf. Statius, Silv. i. 3 : — 
'ceu veritus turbare Vopisci 
Pieriosquediesethabentescarminasomnos.' 

iv. [In holding by the law withiti. 

In holding an intellectual faith which does 
not care * to fix itself to form.' — Ed.] 

XXXIV. i. [See Introduction, supra, pp. 233-234. — Ed.] 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 245 

P. Sec. Ver. 
57. XXXV. i. The narrow house — the grave. 

iii. Ionian hills — the everlasting hills. 

The vastness of the Ages to come may seem 
to militate against that Love. 

iv. The sotind of that fo7'getfiil shore. 

' The land where all things are forgotten.' 

59. XXXVI. [See Introduction, supra, p. 236. — Ed.] 

ii. For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 

Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 

For divine Wisdom had to deal with the 
limited powers of humanity, to which 
truth logically argued out would he 
ineffectual, whereas truth coming in the 
story of the Gospel can influence the 
poorest. 

iii. \jhe Word. As in the first chapter of St. 
John's Gospel — the Revelation of the 
Eternal Thought of the Universe. — Ed.] 

iv. those wild eyes. By this is intended the 
Pacific Islanders, ' wild ' having a sense 
of ' barbarian ' in it. 

60. XXXVII. The Heavenly muse bids the poet's muse 

sing on a less lofty theme. 
[Melpomene, the earthly muse of tragedy, 
answers fur the poet : ' I am compelled 
to speak — as I think of the dead and of 
his words of the comfort in the creed of 
creeds — although I feel myself unworthy 
to speak of such mysteries.'] ^ 

61. V. [The original reading in first edition : — 

And dear as sacra?nental wine. — Ed.] 

vi. viaster'' s field — the province of Christianity 
(see XXXV].). 

1 Note by my mother. 



246 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

62. XXXVIII. ii. the blowing season — the blossoming season. 

63. XXXIX. i. \_smoke — the yew, when flowering, in a 

wind or if struck sends up its poUen like 

smoke. Cf. ' The Holy Grail ' : — 
'Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening 

half 
The cloisters, on a ijustful April morn 
That puff'd the swaying branches into 

smoke.' 
Cf. Memoir, ii. 53. — Ed.] 

ii. \_W hen flower is feeling after flower. 
The yew is dioecious. — Ed.] 

iii. In section ii., as in the two last lines of this 
section, Sorrow only saw the winter 
gloom of the foliage. 

L. vii. {would have told vi\<t2M% — would desire to 
be told.— Ed.] 

65. viii. I have parted with thee until I die, and my 

paths are in the helds I know, whilst 
thme are in lands which I do not know. 
[Cf.'the undiscovered country,' Hamlet^ 
III. i.— Ed.] 

66. XLI. iv. The howlings from forgotten fields. 

The eternal miseries of the Inferno. 

\^Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath. 
The howlings from forgotten fields. 
This passage alludes to the doctrine which 
from first to last, and in so many ways 
and images, my father proclaimed — ' the 
upward and onward progress of life.' 
I have thought that 'forgotten fields' 
implies — not dwelt on, and so disregard- 
ed — a creed that is outworn; but Sir 
Richard Jebb writes : ' I have not been 
able to find any verbal parallel for the 
phrase "forgotten fields," or reference 
to the nethei world. ... I think that 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 247 

P. Sec. Ver. 

" God-forgotten " — outcast — is the most 
probal)le explanation. Cf. d^eos in Sopho- 
cles, O. y. 001.' — Ed.] 

67. XLI. vi. secular to-be — ceons of the fu'ure. [Cf. 
LXXVi. ii. : — 
*The secular abyss to come.' — Ed.] 

69. XLIII. If the immediate life after death be only 
sleep, and the spirit between this life 
and the next should be folded like a 
flower in a night slumber, then the 
remembrance of the past might remain, 
as the smell and colour do in the sleeping 
flower; and in that case the memory of 
our love would last as true, and would 
live pure and whole within the spirit of 
my friend until it was unfolded at the 
breaking of the morn, when the sleep 
was over. 

i. Thro' all its intervital gloom. 

In the passage between this life and the next. 

iv. And at the spiritual prime. 

Dawn of the spiritual life hereafter. 

70. XLIV. i. God shut the door mays of his head. 

Closing of the skull after babyhood. 

The dead after this life may have no re- 
membrance of life, like the living l^abe 
who forgets the time before the sutures 
of the skull are closed, yet the living 
babe grows in knowledge, and though 
the remembrance of his earliest days has 
vanished, yet with his increasing know- 
ledge there comes a dreamy vision of 
what has been; it may be so with the 
dead; if so, resolve my doubts, etc. 

71. XLV. iv. \_This use may lie in blood and breath. 

The purpose of the life here may be to 
realise personal consciousness, else blood 



248 



IN MEMORIAM 



P. Sec. Ver. 

and breath would not bear their due 
fruit. — Ed,] 

72. XLVI. [Theoriginalreadingof first verse (MS.): — 

In travelling tJiro' this lower clime. 

With reason 02ir memorial poiver 
Is shadow'' d by the gro7oing hour, 

lest this should be too much for time. — Ed.] 

iv. love, a brooding star. 

As if Lord of the whole life. 

[Memory fails here, but memory in the next 
life must have all our being and exist- 
ence clearly in view; and will see Love 
shine forth as if Lord of the whole life 
(not merely of those five years), the 
wider landscape aglow with the sunrise 
of a bright and eternal day. — Ed.] 

73. XLVII. The individuality lasts after death, and we 

are not utterly absorbed into the God- 
head. If we are to be finally merged in 
the Universal Soul, Love asks to have at 
least one more parting before we lose 
ourselves.! 

74. XLVIII. iii. [ shame to draw 

The deepest measure. 

For there are ' thoughts that do often lie too 
deep for' mere poetic words. — Ed.] 

XLIX. ii. l^crisp — curl, ripple. Cf. — 

'To watch the crisping ripples on the beach.' 
* Lotos-eaters.' — Ed.] 

77. LI. iv. [See Memoir, i. 481. The Queen quoted this 

verse to my father about the Prince 
Consort just after his death, and told 
him that it had brought her great com- 
fort.— Ed.] 

78. LII. I cannot love thee as I ought, for human 

nature is frail, and cannot be perfect 
like Christ's. Yet it is the ideal, and 
1 See Introduction, supra, p. 232. — Ed. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 249 

P. Sec. Ver. 

truth to the ideal, which make the wealth 
of life. 1 [The more direct line of thought 
is that not even the Gospel tale keeps 
man wholly true to the ideal of Christ. 
But nothing — no shortcoming of frail 
humanity — can move that Spirit of the 
highest love from our side which bids us 
endure and abide the issue. — Ed.] 

78. LII. iv. Abide — wait v\ithout wearying. 

79. LIII. ii. iii. iv. And dare we to this fancy give. 

There is a passionate heat of nature in a 
rake sometimes. The nature that yields 
emotionally may turn out straighter than 
a prig's. Yet we must not be making 
excuses, but we must set before us a rule 
of good for young as for old. 

iv. {^divine Philosophy. Cf. XXIII. vi. — Ed.] 

82. LV. i. The likest God within the soul. 

The inner consciousness — the divine in man. 

iii. And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brijigs but one to bear. 
' Fifty ' should be * myriad.' 

83. V. the larger hope. 

[My father means by ' the larger hope ' that 
the whole human race would, through, 
perhaps, a^^es of suffering, be at length 
purified and saved, even those who now 
'better not with time,' so that at the end 
of ' The Vision of Sin ' we read — 

* God made Himself an awful rose of 
dawn.' — Ed.] 

85. LVI. v\. Dragons of the prime. 

The geologic monsters of the early ages. 

86. LVII. [Cf. 'The Grave.' See Introduction, 

supra, pp. 223-224. — Ed.] 

1 Note by my mother. 



2SO IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

86. LVII. ii. I shall pass ; my work will fail. 

The poet speaks of these poems. Methinks 
I have built a rich shrine to my friend, 
but it will not last. 

iv. Ave^ Ave. 

Cf. Catullus, Carm. ci. lO, these terribly 
pathetic lines : — 
'Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu 
Atque in perpetuum frater Ave atque Vale.' 
[My father wrote : ' Nor can any modern 
elegy, so long as men retain the least 
hope in the after-life of those whom they 
loved, equal in pathos the desolation of 
that everlasting farewell.'] 

87. LVIII. • Ulysses ' was written soon after Arthur 

Hallam's death, and gave my feelings 
about the need of going forward and 
braving the struggle of life perhaps more 
simply than anything in In Memoriam. 

86. Lix. [Inserted in 185 1 as a pendant to Section 

III. — Ed,] 

90. LXI. In power of love not even the greatest 
dead can surpass the poet. 

i. [Cf. XXXVIII. iii. — Ed.] 
iii. \doubtfi(l shore. Cf. — 

' and that which should be man, 
From that one light no man can look upon, 
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons 
And all the shadows.' — *De Profundis.' 

And — 
* And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet 
No phantoms, watching from a phahtom 

shore, 
Await the last and largest sense to make 
The phantom walls of this illusion fade, 
And show us that the world is wholly fair.' 
* Ancient Sage.' — Ed.] 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 251. 

P. Sec. Ver. 

93. LXiv. [This section was composed by my father 
when he was walking up and down the 
Strand and Fleet Street. — Ed,] 

iii. [golden keys — keys of office of State. — Ed.] 

97. LXVII. i. By that broad ivatej- of the ivesi. 

The Severn. 

iv. I myself did not see Clevedon till years 
after the burial of A. H. H. (Jan. 3, 
1834), and then in later editions of hi 
Metnoriam I altered the word ' chancel ' 
(which was the word used by Mr. Hallam 
in his Memoir) to * dark church.' 

98. LXVIII. i. Death's ti.vhi-hr other. 

' Consanguineus Leti Sopor. ' — AL7i. vi. 278. 
[Cf. //. xiv. 231 ; //. xvi. 672 and 682. 
— Ed.] 

99. LXIX. To write poems about death and grief is 

* to wear a crown of thorns,' which the 
people say ought to be laid aside. 

iv. I found an angel of the night. 

But the Divine Thing in the gloom brought 
comfort. 

102. LXXI. [Theoriginalreadingof first verse (MS.) : — 
Old things are clear in waking trance, 
And thou, O Sleep, hast made at last 
A night-long Present of the Past 
In wh ich ive zventth rd sun ny France. — Ed . ] 
\we %vent — in 1832 (see Alemoir, i. 51, and 
following, and the poem ' In the Valley 
of Cauteretz ') . — Ed.] 
[The original reading of last verse (MS.) : — 
Beside the river's wooded reach, 

The meadow set with summer flags, 
The cataract clashing from the crags. 
The breaker breaking on the beach. — Ed.]:' 

iv. [ The cataract flashing from the bridge. — 
that is, from under the bridge. — Ed. ] 



252 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

103. LXXii. Hallam's death-day, September the fif- 

teenth. [Cf. xcix.] 

iv. \yet look'd — yet wouldst have looked. 
— Ed.] 

104. vii. \_thy dull goal of joyless gray — the dull 

sunset. — Ed.] 

105. LXXIII. ii. For notliing is that errs from hnv. 

Cf. Zoroaster's saying, ' Nought errs from 
law.' 

107. LXXV. iii. the breeze of song. 

Cf. Pindar, Pyth. iv. 3 — odpov vjxviav. 

iv. Thy leaf has perish'' d in the green. 
At 23. 

109. LXXVI. i. Take zvings of fancy, and ascend. 
And in a moment set thy face 
Where all the starry heavens of space 
Are sharpen^ d to a needless end. 
So distant in void space that all our firma- 
ment would appear to be a needle-point 
thence. 

ii. The secular abyss to come — the ages upon 
ages to be (ct. Sect. XLVi). 

iii. the matin soitgs. 

The great early poets. 

iv. {^these remain — the yew and oak. — Ed.] 

no. LXXVII. iii. {then changed to something else. 

The grief that is no longer a grief — Ed] 

III. LXXVIII. iii. The mimic picture's breathing grace. 
Tableaux vivants. 
hoodman-blind — blind man's buff. [Cf. — 

' What devil was't 
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman- 
blind?' — Hamlet, ill. iv. — Ed.] 
113. LXXIX. The section is addressed to my brother 
Charles (Tennyson Turner). 
[My father wrote to Mr. Gladstone : * He 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 253 

P. Sec. Ver. 

was almost the most lovable human 
being I have ever met.' — Ed.] 

113. LXXIX. i. \infee — in possession. Cf. Wordsworth's 
sonnet on Venice : — 
* Once did she hold the gorgeous East in 
fee.' — Ed.] 

iv. kindred broios was originally 'brother 
brows.' 

116. LXXXI. i. Could I have said while he 7vas he7-e. 

[My father told me, as far as I remember, 
that a note of exclamation had been 
omitted by accident after ' ear ' (thus, 
ear!). James Spedding, in a pencil 
note on the MS. of hi Menioj-iam, 
writes, * Could I have said — meaning, 
1 wish I could. ' — Ed.] 

ii. \_Love, then, Love at that time. — Ed.] 

117. LXXXII. ii. \_Froj7i state to state the spirit walks. 

Cf. Sect. XXX. vi. and vii., and — 
* Some draught of Lethe might await 
The slipping thro' from state to state.' 
'Two Voices.' — Ed.] 

119. LXXXiv. iii. When thou should' st link thy life with one 
Of mine own house. 

The projected marriage of A. H. H. with 
Emily Tennyson. 

121. xi. Arrive at last the blessed goal. 

Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. ii. — 
' ere he arrive 
The happy isle.' 

xii. {^backward. 

Looking back on what might have been. 

— Ed.] 

123.LXXXV. [Addressed to Edmund Lushington. — 

Ed.] 



254 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

123. Lxxxv. vi. The great Intelligences fair. 

Cf. Lycidas : — 
* There entertain him all the Saints above 
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 
That sing, and singing in their glory 

move. 
And vi'ipe the tears for ever from his eyes.' 
[Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, v. 407, and Dante, 
// Convito, ii. 5. 
* Intelligenze, le quali la volgare 
gente chiama Angeli.' — Ed.] 

vii. {cycled times — earthly periods. — Ed.] 

124. X. Yet none could better know than I, 

Hozv nnuh of act at htiman hands 
The sense of human will demands. 
Yet I know that the knowledge that we 
have free will demands from us action. 

xiv. {imaginative woe. 

The imaginative and speculative sorrow of 

the poet. Cf. infra, verse xxiv. : — 
' And pining life be fancy-fed.' — Ed.] 

126. xxiii. [Think of me as having reached the final 

goal of bliss,and as triumphing in the — 
' one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.' 
— Ed.] 

1 27. xxvi. 1. i. [With love as true, if not so fresh. — Ed. ] 

xxvii. \Jiold apart — set by itself, above rivalry. 

— Ed.] 

129. Lxxxvi. Written at Barmouth, 
i. ambrosial air. 

It was a west wind, 
ii. the horned flood. 

Between two promontories. 
iv. orient star. 

Any rising star is here intended. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 255 

P. Sec. Ver. 
130. LXXXVii. Trinity College, Cambridge. 

iv. the rooms. 

Which were in New Court, Trinity. [Now 
3G.-ED.] 

132. X. The bar of Michael Angela. 

The broad bar of frontal bone over the 
eyes of Michael Angelo. 

133. LXXXViii. To the Nightingale. 

i. \_quicks — quickset thorn. — Ed.] 

134. LXXXIX. Somersby. 

i. cott7iter change — chequer. 

The towering sycamore is cut down, and 
the four poplars are gone, and the 
lawn is no longer flat. 

136. xii. Before the criinson-circled star. 

Before Venus, the evening star, had dipt 
into the sunset. The planets, accord- 
ing to La Place, were evolved from 
the sun. 

137. XC. [He who first suggested that the dead 

would not be welcome if they came to 
life again knew not the highest love. 
Cf.— 

'For surely now our household hearths 
are cold : 
Our sons inherit us: our looks are 

strange : 
And we should come like ghosts to trouble 
joy.' — * Lotos-Eaters.' — Ed.] 

139. XCI. i. Flits by the sea-blue bird of March. 

'■Darts the sea-shiniftg bird of March' 
would best suit the Kingfisher. I used 
to see him in our brook first in March, 
He came up from the sea. aXirropcpvpos 
eiapos opvLs. — Alcman. [Cf. Memoir, 
ii. 4. — Ed.] 



256 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

140. XCII. iv. And such refraction of events 

As often rises ere they rise. 

The heavenly bodies are seen above the 

horizon, by refraction, before they 

actually rise. 
XCiii. ii. [ Where all the nerve of sense is numb. 
This spiritual state is described in Sect. 

xciv. — Ed.] 

141. iii. \_With gods in tinconjectured bliss. Cf. 

Co?nus, 1 1 — 
* Among the enthroned gods on sainted 

seats.' — Ed.] 
\jenf old-complicated. Refers to the ten 

heavens of Dante. Cf. Paradiso, XXVIII. 

XV. and after. — Ed.] 

142. XCIV. iii. They haunt the silence of the breast. 

This was what I felt. 

143. XCV. ii. The brook alone f^J'-off was heard. 

It was a marvellously still night, and I 
asked my brother Charles to listen to 
the brook, which we had never heard 
so far off before. 
iii. \_lit — alighted. — Ed,] 

the filmy shapes 

That haitnt the dusk with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes. 

Moths; perhaps the ermine or the puss- 
moth. 

144. ix. The living soul. 

The Deity, maybe. The first reading, 
' his living soul,' troubled me, as per- 
haps giving a wrong impression. 
[The old passage that troubled him 

was : — 
^ His living sotd was flasJC d on mine, 
And mine in his was wouna, 

and whirPd 
About empyreal heights of thought^ 
And came on that which is.' 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 



257 



P. Sec. Ver. 

With reference to the later reading, my 
father would say: 'Of course the 
greater Soul may include the less.' He 
preferred, however, for fear of giving a 
wrong impression, the vaguer and more 
abstract later reading; and his further 
comment was : ' I have often had that 
feeling of being whirled up and rapt 
into the Great Suul.' — Ed.] 

145. XCV. X. {that which is. 

To 6v, the Absolute Reality. — Ed.] 

147. xcvi. \\. I know not : one indeed I knew 

In many a subtle question versed, 
Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 
But ever strove to make it trzie, 
A. H. H. 
vi. Cf. Exodus xix. 16, * And it came to ]')ass 
on the third day, in the morning, that 
there were thunders and lightnings, and 
a thick cloud upon the mount, and the 
voice of the trumpet exceeding loud.' 
[The thought suggested in this verse is 
that the stronger faith of Moses — found 
in the darkness of the cloud through 
commune with the Power therein 
dwelling — is of a higher order than the 
creeds of those who walk by sight rather 
than by insight. — Ed. ] 

149. XCVII. The relation of one on earth to one in the 
other and higher world. Not my re- 
lation to him here. He looked up to 
me as I looked up to him. 
[Love finds his image everywhere. The 
relation of one on earth to one in the 
other world is as a wife's love for her 
husband after a love which has been 
at first demonstrative. Now he is 
compelled to be wrapt in matters dark 
and deep. Although he seems distent, 



258 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

she knows that he loves her as well as 
before, for she loves him in all true 
faith.] 1 

149. XCVii. i. His own vast shadow glory crowned. 
Like the spectre of the Brocken. 

151. xcviii. i. You leave lis : ' You ' is imaginary. 

ii. 7(jisp — ignis-fatuus. 

152. V. Gnarr — snarl. 

vi. niother town — metropolis. 

153. XCIX. i. Day, when J lost the flower of men. 

September the fifteenth. Cf. LXXII. ii. 
iii. {coming care — the hardship of winter. — Ed.] 

154. V. Betzvixt the slumber of the poles. 

The ends of the axis of the earth, which 
move so slowly that they seem not 
to move, but slumber. 

155. €.(1837) '• I dimb the hill. 

Hill above Somersby. 
iv. N'or runlet tinkling from the rock. 

The rock in Holywell, which is a 
wooded ravine, commonly called there 
'the Glen.' 

157. CI. iii. The brook. 

[The brook at Somersby, the charm and 
beauty of which was a joy to my father 
all his life. — Ed.] 

iii. or zvhen the lesser wain. 

[My father would often spend his nights 
wandering about the wolds, gazing at 
the stars. Edward FitzGerald writes : 
'Like Wordsworth on the mountains, 
Alfred too, when a lad abroad on the 
wold, sometimes of a night with the 

1 Note by my mother. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 259 

P. Sec. Ver. 

shepherd, watched not only the flock 
on the greensward, but also 
' the fleecy star that bears 
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas.' 
Cf. Memoii'y i. 19. — Ed.] 
159. CII. ii. Two spirits of a diverse love. 

First, the love of the native place ; second, 
this enhanced by the memory of 
A. H. H. 

161. cm. [I have a dream which comforts me on 

leaving the old home and brings me 
content. The departure suggests the 
departure of death, and my reunion 
with him. I have grown in spiritual 
grace as he has. The gorgeous sky at 
the end of the section typifies the glory 
of the hope in that which is to be.]i 

ii. Metho light I dwelt within a hall. 
And maidens with me : 
They are the Muses, poetry, arts — all that 
made life beautiful here, which we hope 
will pass with us beyond the grave. 

hidde7i summits — the divine. 
river — life, 
iv. sea — eternity. 

162. vii. The progress of the Age. 

ix. The great hopes of humanity and science. 

164. CIV. i. A single church below the hill. 

Waltham Abbey church, 
iii. But all is nezv unhallow'' d ground. 

High Beech, Epping Forest (where we 
were living). [Cf. xcix. ii. — Ed.] 

165. cv. iii. \_abtise. Cf. XXX. ii. In the old sense — 

wrong. — Ed.] 

1 Note by my mother. 



26o IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

i66. cv. vi.-vii. No dance, no motion, save alone 

What lightens in the hicid east 
Of rising xvorlds by yonder wood. 
The scintillating motion of the stars that 
rise, 
vii. \^Riin out yotcr tneasured arcs, and lead 
The closing cycle. 

Fulfil your appointed revolutions, and bring 
the closing period 'rich in good.' Cf. 
Vergil, Eel. iv. 4. — 
Ultima Cvmaei venit jam carminis aetas. 

— Ed.] 

168. cvi. viii. Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

The broader Christianity of the future. 
[Cf. Introduction, supra, p. 236. — Ed.] 

169. CVII. i. // is the day when he was born. 

February I, 181 1. 

iii. grides — grates. 

iv. \^drifts. 

Fine snow which passes in squalls to fall 
into the breaker, and darkens before 
melting in the sea. Cf. 'The Progress 
of Spring,' iii. — Ed.] 

171. cviii. i. I will not shut me from my kind. 

Grief shall not make me a hermit, and I 
will not indulge in vacant yearnings and 
barren aspirations; it is useless trying 
to find him in the other worlds — I find 
nothing but the reflections of myself: I 
had better learn the lesson that sorrow 
teaches. 

iv. [The original reading of last line (MS.) : — 
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee. 
Cf. cxiii. i. 
A pencil note by James Spedding on the 
MS. of In Alenioriam says : ' You 
might give the thought a turn of this 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 261 

P. Sec. Ver. 

kind : " The wisdom that died with 
you is lost for ever, but out of the loss 
itself some other wisdom may be 
gained." ' — Ed.] 
172. CIX. [The judgment on Hallam of his contem- 

poraries coincided with that of my father 
{Memoir, i. 105-108). See, for instance, 
extract from J. M. Kemble's letter : 
'This is a loss which will most assuredly 
be felt by this age, for if ever man was 
born for great things he was. Never 
was a more powerful intellect joined 
to a purer and holier heart ; and the 
whole illuminated with the richest im- 
agination, with the most sparkling yet 
the kindest wit.' — Ed.] 
i. From household fountains. 

My father expressed no opinion on 
Gatty's interpretation, ' imported from 
an intellectual home,' or on mine, 
* welling up from original sources 
within.' Cf. the use oioiKodev. — Ed.] 
vi. Nor let thy zuisdom make 77ie wise. 

If I do not let thy wisdom make me wise. 
ex. i. [ The men of rathe and riper years. 

' Rathe,' Anglo-Saxon hrceth, ' early.' Cf. 
Lancelot and Elaine : ' Till rathe she 
rose.' — Ed.] 

176. CXI. V. [drew in — contracted, narrowed. — Ed.] 

177. vi. charlatan. 

From Ital. ciarlatano, a mountebank; 
hence the accent on the last syllable. 

178. CXII. i. {^High ivisdoin 1% 'vcon\Q.2\. 'High wisdom' 

has been twitting the poet that although 
he gazes with calm and indulgent eyes 
on unaccomplished greatness, yet he 
makes light of narrower natures more 
perfect in their own small way. — Ed.] 



262 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 

178. CXII. i. glo7-ious iitstifficiencies. 

Unaccomplished greatness such as Arthur 
Hallam's. 

set light by — make light of. 

[In answer to 'high wisdom' the poet 
says) : * The power and grasp and 
originality of A. H. H.'s intellect, and 
the greatness of his nature [which are 
not mere 'glorious insufficiencies'], 
make me seem careless about those that 
have a narrower perfectness.']^ 

ii. the lesser lords of doom. 

Those that have free-will, but less intellect. 

179. cxiii. i. [Cf. cviii. iv. — Ed.] 
181. CXiv. i. Who shall fix her pillars. 

' Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath 
hewn out her seven pillars.' — Proverbs 
IX. i. 

183. CXV. i. burgeons — buds. 

7?iaze of quick. — quickset tangle. 
\_squares. Cf. ' The Ring ' — 
'The down that sees 
A thousand squares of corn and meadow, 

far 
As the gray deep.' — Ed.] 

185. CXVI. i. crescent prime — growing spring. 

186. cxvii. iii. And every span of shade that steals. 

The sun-dial. 

And every kiss of tootlted wheels. 

The clock. 

l87.CXViii.iv. \type. — represent ; cf. ' Princess,' vii. 
' Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives.' 

188. v. [By gradual self-development, or by sor- 

rows and fierce strivings and calamities. 
— Ed.] 



AUTHOR'S NOTES tIot, 

P. Sec. Ver. 

189. cxix. [Cf. vii. — Ed.] 

190. CXX. i. Like Paul with beasts. 

• If after the manner of men I have fought 
with beasts at Ephesus, what advan- 
tageth it me ? ' — i Cor. xv. 32. 

iii. Let hifft, the wiser man who springs 
Llereafter, up from childhood shape 
LLis action like the greater ape. 
Spoken ironically against mere materialism, 
not against evolution. 

192. CXXI. [Written at Shiplake, where my father and 

mother were married. — Ed.] 

V. Sweet I Lesper- Phosphor^ double name. 

The evening star is also the morning star, 
death and sorrow brighten into death 
and hope. 

193. CXXII. i. doom — that of grief. 

194. V. Ajtd every dew-drop paints a bow. 

Every dew-drop turns into a miniature 
rainbow. 

195. CXXiii. Geologic changes. 

[All material things are unsubstantial, yet 
there is that in myself which assures me 
that the spiritual part of man abides, and 
that we shall meet again.] 1 

i. The stillness of the central sea. 

Baloonists say that even in a storm the 
middle sea is noiseless. 

[Professor George Darwin writes : ' People 
always talk at sea of the howling of the 
wind and lashing of the sea, but it is 
the ship that makes it all. A man cling- 
ing to a spar in a heavy sea would only 
hear a little gentle swishing from the 
"white horses." '] 

^ Note by my mother. 



264 IN MEMORIAM 

P. Sec. Ver. 
195.CXXIII, iii. \_For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, 

I cannot think the thing farewell. 

Cf. note to LVii. iv., and the poem ' Frater 
Ave at que Vale.' — Ed.J 

197.CXXIV. V. \blind clamour refers to — 

I heard a voice * believe no more ' 

And heard an ever-breaking shore 

That tumbled in the Godless deep. — Ed.] 

199. CXXVi. [The following was originally the second 

verse (MS.) : — 
Love is my king, nor here alone. 

But 7vhere I see the distance loom. 
For in the field behind the tomb 
There rests the shadow of his throne. 

— Ed.] 

[The following was originally the third 

verse (MS.) : — 
And here at times a sentinel 

That moves about frotn place to place. 
And zvhispers to the vast of space 
Among the worlds, that all is well. 

— Ed.] 

200. CXXVII. iv. \_brute earth. 

Cf. * bruta tellus,' the heavy, inert earth. 
— Hor. I. xxxiv. — Ed.] 

202. cxxviii. [In comradeship with Love that is all the 
stronger for facing Death, the Faith 
which believes in the progress of the 
world sees that all in the individual as 
in the race is working to one great 
result, however retrograde the eddies 
of the world-currents may at times 
appear to be.] 1 (This section must be 
read in close connection with cxxvi. 
and CXXVII.) 

204. CXXIX. [These two faiths are in reality the same. 
The thought of thee as human and 

1 Note by my mother. 



AUTHOR'S NOTES 265 

P. Sec. Ver. 

divine mingles with all great thoughts 
as to the destiny of the world (cf. 
cxxx.).]^ 
He ' shall live though he die.' 

[The following words were uttered by my 
father in January, 1869, and bear upon 
this section : — ' Yes, it is true that there 
are moments when the flesh is nothing 
to me, when I feel and know the flesh 
to be the vision, God and the Spiritual 
the only real and true. Depend upon 
it, the Spiritual is the real : it belongs 
to one more than the hand and the 
foot. You may tell me that my hand 
and my foot are only imaginary symbols 
of my existence, I could believe you ; 
but you never, never can convince me 
that the / is not an eternal Reality, 
and that the Spiritual is not the true 
and real part of me.' These words he 
spoke with such passionate earnestness 
that a solemn silence fell on us as he 
left the room. — Ed.] 

O living will. 

That which we know as Free Will in man. 
[See Introduction, supra, pp. 231-232. — 
Ed.] 

\spiritual rock. Cf. I Cor. x. 4. 

conquer' d years. Cf. 'victor Hours,' I. iv. 

— Ed.] 

The marriage of Edmund Lushington and 
Cecilia Tennyson, Oct. 10, 1842. 

^ Note by my mother. 



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